Pune commissioner of police (CP) Amitesh Kumar told TOI, “We have recorded the statement of the woman (49).She told us that the doctors of the hospital had told her to give her blood as sample instead of her son’s. She feigned ignorance on why the doctors told her so.”
The boy’s mother was arrested in the case in which the police invoked charges of forgery and destruction of evidence after DNA report of the blood sample collected at the hospital revealed that it did not belong to the boy.
The state government-appointed committee in its report claimed that a woman and two elderly people gave their blood samples instead of the boy after accident in Kalyaninagar on May 19, in which two techies were killed. The boy, according to the police, had gone to two pubs before the accident and consumed liquor with his friends.
The boy’s father (50), a builder, was arrested in the case later in the afternoon, after the police secured his custody from the Yerawada central prison. Earlier, he and his father (grandfather of the minor driver) were arrested on the charge of abducting and confining their family driver (42) and asking him to own up the crime.
Cops record teen driver’s statement in presence of his arrested mother
The police could not establish contact with the boy’s mother for the past four days. People in her bungalow informed the police that she was not there.
A senior crime branch officer told TOI, “The woman had gone to Mumbai. She returned to Pune late on Friday night. Our team went to the bungalow after we came to know about it and detained her.”
An officer handed over a notice to the woman after detaining her, asking her to be present in the observation home because they wanted to record the statement of the boy, which could be done only in the presence of his guardians. “Our team recorded the boy’s statement in the presence of his mother,” said additional commissioner of police (crime) Shailesh Balkawade.
An officer of the Pune crime branch said, “The boy knows how the accident occurred on May 19. He knows how he left his bungalow, where all he went with his friends and how he took the steering wheel of the Porsche. We collected pieces of evidence in the last 12 days and wanted to corroborate them with his statement.”
Another senior crime branch officer said, “The woman told us that she had given her blood as sample at ward No. 40 of the hospital on May 19. We will take her blood samples afresh for DNA fingerprinting tests and compare them. It will reveal if the boy’s mother had indeed given her blood for test at the hospital.”
The police had earlier arrested Dr Ajay Taware, Dr Shrihari Halnor and a mortuary staffer of the Sassoon hospital, Ghatkamble Atul Ghatkamble, on the charge of swapping the blood sample of the boy after he was detained following the accident. “We have seized the hospital DVR (digital video recorder). The boy’s mother and other relatives can be seen near ward no. 40 on May 19. The boy’s family members had gone to the hospital in a car. It belonged to the boy’s father,” the senior crime branch officer said.
The police are searching for another car that went to the hospital in the morning of May 19. A middleman had then contacted Ghatkamble, and the latter contacted Taware. Following this, Taware and the boy’s father communicated with each other over the phone. Taware then told Halnor to swap the blood samples. “We are still searching for the boy’s blood sample collected in a syringe at the hospital,” he said.