The Pune Juvenile Justice Board’s ruling that the 17‑year‑old accused in last year’s fatal Porsche crash will be tried as a juvenile has reignited anger among the families of the two software engineers killed in the incident.
In an interview with NDTV, the victims’ fathers said the outcome underscores how “money and power” can bend the system.
“Even after more than a year, no one was appointed in the place of board members who had been sacked by the government. So how is it that within a month, people were appointed and decisions were taken… there will be questions raised on their functioning,” Suresh Koshta, father of Ashwini Koshta, has been quoted as saying.
“Right in the beginning, the whole country had pointed fingers at the functioning of the juvenile justice board. A person who was drinking, driving a car, how can he be considered a juvenile… I think there should have been no question about treating him as an adult,” he added.
Om Prakash Awadhiya, father of Aneesh Awadhiya, said it was “clear from the beginning what we would get,” adding, “The government should have ensured that such a thing did not happen. Now that this has happened, what can we say?”
Asked whether the case reflected “money power and influence,” he told NDTV, “These are rich people… They give a car costing Rs 3 crore in the hands of their children… Media reported that they were trying to change the blood samples but could not do it because of the doctors.”
The crash took place shortly after midnight on May 19 last year, when the teenager, returning from a bar where he and friends allegedly spent Rs 48,000 on alcohol in 90 minutes ‘celebrating’ exam results, slammed his father’s Porsche into the victims’ motorcycle. Both 24‑year‑old engineers died instantly.
Early police handling was criticised because the boy’s father is a prominent Pune businessman. Outrage intensified when the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB) initially granted bail on conditions that included writing a 300‑word essay on road safety. The teen was later sent to an observation home.
The Bombay high court later ordered his release. The teenager’s mother was arrested in June last year after she was accused of attempting to shield her son by swapping her blood sample with his to conceal alcohol consumption at the time of the accident and paid ₹3 lakh for the same. The Supreme Court granted her interim bail in April.
At Monday’s hearing, defence lawyer Prashant Patil told news agency PTI that none of the charges carry a statutory minimum penalty of seven years, the threshold the Supreme Court sets for labelling an offence “heinous.” Because of that, he said, the prosecution’s request to try the boy as an adult was “not maintainable.”
The Board on Tuesday ruled that the teenager involved in the Porsche crash case will be treated as a minor.
The defence counsel in the case said that the court rejected Pune police's plea to treat him as an adult.
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