A minor teenager son of a well-known Pune Builder Vishal Agarwal was involved in a tragedy where he allegedly knocked down a couple while driving an unnumbered Porsche car at breakneck speed after Saturday midnight. Here’s a look at how every gatekeeper failed the victims.
The parent Vishal Agarwal has agreed to the police that he knew his son was not trained to drive, didn’t have a license and was going to party. Yet he gave him his Porsche car.
The car did not have a number plate. In case the crowd had not caught hold of the accused, it would have been extremely difficult to trace and nail the culprit. The fact that an unnumbered car was roaming on Pune streets, is a failure of the city police.
The accused partied at two restaurants before knocking down the couple. Both the hotel owners and the bar managers knew that the accused was a teenager and yet served alcohol to him. Legal age limit for alcohol consumption is 25 years in Maharashtra. The accused was way below the age limit and the staff could have refused.
Once the crowd handed over the accused to the police, he should have been immediately subjected to medical test. This would have revealed the alcohol volume in the blood. However, the reports so far indicate that the police took unusually long to administer the test, which may have resulted in the medical report indicating negative. A CCTV footage is available of the accused at one of the hotels, but it will be difficult to prove just on the basis of the CCTV footage.
A Pune legislator Sunil Tingre of Ajit Pawar’s NCP faction is reported to have rushed to the police station early morning on Sunday after learning of the incident. While he has denied any undue pressure on the authorities, there is room to believe this happened, looking at the sequence of events and how the accused was released on bail after a mere detention of 15 hours.
The incident got attention only after the bail conditions set by the magistrate came to light. One of them- write a 300 word essay on the accident, is so petty that the social media, rightfully erupted in an outrage. Despite a serious crime at the hands of a juvenile who caused the death of two persons by driving a speeding car, the minor was reported to have served pizza burger at the police station.
Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who is also the Home Minister, is said to have got into an action mode late on Monday after learning of the coverage in media. This is lame because the incident was serious and every media outlet was covering it through Sunday. It is not enough that the parent, and hotel staff is booked, action should also be initiated against the police officers who were lax and did not do enough to see the justice is done to the victims.