Pune Porsche crash: 'Parents may have destroyed teen’s blood sample'

Pune: The prosecution on Monday told a special court that the parents of the 17-year-old involved in the May 19 Porsche Taycan crash were suspected to have destroyed the teenager’s blood sample to manipulate the blood alcohol report. The sample was collected at Sassoon General Hospital and police claimed that it was switched with that of the minor’s mother.
Assistant commissioner of police (crime) Satish Govekar and his team produced the teenager’s father, a city-based builder, his mother, and their aide, Ashfaque Makandar, before special judge U M Mudhalkar. Makandar is accused of facilitating contact between the builder and the two arrested Sassoon hospital doctors.

Additional public prosecutor Anil Kumbhar said the parents’ further questioning was essential to find out where the minor’s blood was destroyed and what monetary benefits they promised to Dr Ajay Taware to manipulate the report.
Taware is the suspended head of the hospital’s forensic sciences department, who is among the arrested co-accused.
The builder had replaced the digital video recorder of CCTV cameras at the family’s Wadgaon Sheri bungalow after the car crash, the prosecutor said and added the police needed more time to recover the original footage.
Makandar’s questioning was required to recover Rs1 lakh of the Rs4 lakh he received from the teen’s father, and to establish at whose instance he helped the parents, Kumbhar said. According to the police, Makandar gave Rs3 lakh to the hospital’s suspended mortuary staffer, Atul Ghatkamble, who kept Rs50,000 for himself and gave Rs2.50 lakh to Dr Shrihari Halnor, the other arrested doctor and suspended casualty medical officer.
It is the police’s case that Dr Halnor acted on instructions from Dr Taware to swap the teenager’s blood sample. Makandar and the parents had so far not cooperated with the investigators on these aspects, the prosecutor claimed.
Seeking extension of the trio’s police custody, Govekar said the police had seized Ghatkamble’s two-wheeler used for collecting Rs3 lakh from Makandar and had also seized the latter’s car. Dr Halnor’s signature and handwriting specimen had been sent for an analysis to the criminal investigation department, Pune, Govekar said. The police officer also said that they had seized the register from the hospital’s ward number 40 where the blood sample was collected. Govekar further said the police had collected digital evidence of the teenager driving the car and had also gathered proof to show that the parents, Makandar, Dr Taware and Dr Halnor communicated with each other over phone.
Lawyers Prashant Patil and R L Dhapate, representing the parents and Makandar, claimed that the police had cited the same reasons in their earlier remand report and that the court had given them sufficient time to conduct investigations. As such, there was no need to extend their clients’ custody, they said. After hearing both sides, the court extended the trio’s police custody till June 14.