Pune Teen Driver’s Father Had Elaborate Escape Plan. How He Was Caught

Pune:

The father of the 17-year-old Pune teen driver, whose late-night drunken Porsche dash left two 24-year-old engineers dead, had made an elaborate escape plan, but the cops tracked him down.

Soon after an FIR was registered against him for letting his teenaged son drive the luxury car, the prominent Pune realtor was on the run. To mislead the cops, he left home in his car and asked the driver to take the road to Mumbai. He told another driver to leave for Goa in his other car. On the way to Mumbai, he got off the car and used a friend’s car to proceed towards Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, earlier known as Aurangabad. Multiple cars were involved to confuse the cops on where he was headed, police have said. The realtor also started using a new SIM card so that police cannot track his number, police have said.

When police got information that he was in his friend’s car, they started tracking the vehicle through its GPS. A team of the Pune crime branch then identified him using footage from CCTV cameras on the route. Eventually, in a late night raid at a lodge in Sambhajinagar, the cops arrested the realtor. He will be produced in court today.

The Porsche crash, which took place on Saturday night, has sparked national outrage after the teenager was granted bail within 15 hours on conditions that many have described as flimsy. A local court asked him to write a 300-word essay on accidents, work with traffic police for 15 days and undergo counselling for his drinking habit.

Police have now moved the juvenile justice board for permission to try the teenager — aged 17 years and eight months — as an adult. A decision on this plea is also expected today.

Aneesh Awadhiya and Ashwini Koshtha, both from Madhya Pradesh, were returning from a get-together on a bike when the Porsche, reportedly at a speed of 200 km per hour, hit them from behind. Both IT engineers died on the spot.

Their families have criticised the swift bail granted to the teenaged driver and described this incident as a “murder, not an accident”. The teen and his two friends were returning from a pub when the accident took place. Police have also arrested owners of two establishments and a staff for serving alcohol to the minor.

Pune Police Commissioner Amitesh Kumar told NDTV last night that they are making a “watertight case”. “We have technical evidence coupled with corroborative evidence to make a watertight case to have this accused punished under the relevant sections of the law,” he said.