NEW DELHI: In a shocking development in the Pune Porsche accident case that claimed the lives of two techies, according to TV reports, the blood sample of the accused teenager, which was meant for an alcohol test, was swapped with his mother’s sample.
The crime branch on Monday arrested two doctors at govt-run Sassoon General Hospital — forensic sciences department head Dr Ajay Taware and casualty medical officer Dr Shrihari Halnor — and a staffer from the mortuary on charges of switching the blood sample of the teen involved in the May 19 accident.
The police said the trio acted at the behest of the underage car driver’s father, a city builder, through a ‘middleman’ to manipulate the report that would confirm if the 17-year-old was under the influence of alcohol when he crashed a Porsche Taycan into a motorcycle, killing two techies.
The arrests came after the police received the minor’s blood sample reports from Sassoon hospital and an Aundh-based hospital, both of which came negative for alcohol content in blood, and got reports of the minor and his father’s DNA fingerprinting from the forensic sciences laboratory.
“Our investigation revealed that after the accident, the builder hired a middleman (who is yet to be identified) to get in touch with Ghatkamble and the latter then facilitated the builder’s contact with Taware around 10am on May 19. A scrutiny of the builder’s phone, seized from his bungalow, showed that he made one regular call to Taware and later used an application to make 20 more calls,” said Pune police commissioner Amitesh Kumar.
Casualty medical officer Dr Shrihari Halnor admitted that he had received Rs 3 lakh from Taware. It was Halnor who discarded the minor’s blood sample in a dustbin and replaced it with the blood sample of his mother.
The crime branch on Monday arrested two doctors at govt-run Sassoon General Hospital — forensic sciences department head Dr Ajay Taware and casualty medical officer Dr Shrihari Halnor — and a staffer from the mortuary on charges of switching the blood sample of the teen involved in the May 19 accident.
The police said the trio acted at the behest of the underage car driver’s father, a city builder, through a ‘middleman’ to manipulate the report that would confirm if the 17-year-old was under the influence of alcohol when he crashed a Porsche Taycan into a motorcycle, killing two techies.
The arrests came after the police received the minor’s blood sample reports from Sassoon hospital and an Aundh-based hospital, both of which came negative for alcohol content in blood, and got reports of the minor and his father’s DNA fingerprinting from the forensic sciences laboratory.
“Our investigation revealed that after the accident, the builder hired a middleman (who is yet to be identified) to get in touch with Ghatkamble and the latter then facilitated the builder’s contact with Taware around 10am on May 19. A scrutiny of the builder’s phone, seized from his bungalow, showed that he made one regular call to Taware and later used an application to make 20 more calls,” said Pune police commissioner Amitesh Kumar.
Casualty medical officer Dr Shrihari Halnor admitted that he had received Rs 3 lakh from Taware. It was Halnor who discarded the minor’s blood sample in a dustbin and replaced it with the blood sample of his mother.