Decoy cars, a new SIM, and CCTVs — the arrest of the father of the Pune teenager, who allegedly killed two techies in a high-speed accident, was nothing short of a Bollywood chase.
The Pune Police arrested the well-known realtor almost two days after his 17-year-old son rammed his speeding unregistered Porsche into the techies’ motorbike early on May 19.
The Pune-based builder laid out a complex escape plan involving several cars to mislead the police, media reports have said.
He fled soon after a complaint was filed against him for allowing his underage son to drive. He got into his car, drove out of town and told the driver to take the road to Mumbai. He told another of his drivers to take one of his cars to Goa to confuse the police, reports said.
He stepped out of the car on way to Mumbai and drove to Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, once known as Aurangabad, using a friend's vehicle.
According to authorities, many cars were used by the builder to throw the police off track. To prevent investigators from tracking him through his phone, he got a new SIM card, reports said.
Police started tracking the car's GPS once they got to know that the builder was using his friend’s car. A team of Pune crime branch used CCTV footage of the route he took to identify him. The realtor was taken into custody after an early-morning raid on a resort in Sambhajinagar on May 21.
On May 22, the juvenile justice board, which let go off the boy within 15 hours of arrest, is likely to pass an order on the Pune police’s plea to try the 17-year-old as an adult.
Juvenile justice boards decide the course of action for children who are in “conflict with law”. Children below the age of 18 cannot be tried in a court of law nor can they been sentenced.
These boards, however, have the discretion to order those aged between 16 and 18 to be tried as an adult for serious offences.
The punishment suggested by the board, including a 300-word essay on road safety and go into rehab for alcoholism, triggered an outrage.
Who is the teen's father?
The father comes from a family of well-known builders and runs a 40-year-old company, which has built several housing projects in Pune's Wadgaon Sheri, Kharadi, and Viman Nagar neighbourhoods. It has also constructed five-star hotels in the city.
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