The pune car accident: Glaring failures of the system

Dr Sudhir Kumar Das

(dasudhirk@gmail.com)

On the night of May 19,a 17 year 8-month-old son of a wealthy builder Vishal Agarwal, driving a luxury Porsche Tay can car allegedly in an inebriated state, mowed down two 24-year-old software engineers Ashwini Kostha and Anish Awadhya of Madhya Pradesh in Pune’s Kalyan Nagar area. This accident would have gone unnoticed as thousand such others that occur on a daily basis on the roads of India.But what makes this case a stand-out one is the massive cover-up operation that followed, involving the members of the super-rich family and the compliant system. The entire system, police, political, medical, and even the judiciary, suddenly became alert, not to provide justice to the two innocent victims, but to save the culprit.

The local MLA arrived at the police station at the wee hours and did everything to stall the investigative agencies from following the proper legal procedure of criminal justice system. The investigative agencies were more than willing to acquiesce to the commands of the political boss.The super-rich brat of the wealthy arrogant father was not made to undergo the mandatory blood or urine test to measure the level of alcohol in his blood stream, an elementary requirement in such cases. The videos of the spoilt son drinking in the pub, despite a minor, had already become viral on social media.  The police allegedly fed him pizza and burger at the police station so that the alcohol level could be lessened in his blood samples. Some 8 to 9 hours later, the samples were taken to Pune’s Sassoon Hospital for a deliberately delayed blood test.  The doctors there were allegedly already bought —they threw the original blood samples of the super-rich brat in the dustbin, and instead sent the blood sample allegedly of his mother so that the forensic result of the blood test would come alcohol negative.

The rottenness of the system did not end here. After a protective system at the service of the privileged wealthy finally produced him before the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB), the stink in the lower judiciary exploded there. The JJB delivered a logic-defying judgement which will make any sane person hang his head in shame. The JJB ordered the juvenile to write a 300-word essay on road safety and do some community work! This preposterous judgement outraged every rational person and the tremors were felt by the otherwise apathetic ruling dispensation as it was election time. TheHome Minister ofMaharashtra DevendraFadnavistook notice of the negative public perception of the system he was presiding over. To quell public outrage, the case was reinvestigated by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) and some of the accused, not all, were put behind bars including the father, grandfather, the mother of the juvenile son, and the two doctors —for tampering with evidence, kidnapping and forcing the family driver to take up the blame. It still seems that the government is not after everyone who tried to influence the initial stage of theinvestigation, and there is every reason to believe that a massive cover-up operationis stillgoing on.

The Pune Porsche accident case has exposedone of the most serious maladies ailing our administrative, political, medical, and judiciary systems. The politicians are dependent on the wealthy for election campaigning, and the wealthy make them play to their tunes after they get elected. This happens at every level of the political spectrum in India, since we do not have a transparent political donation system. The case of the MLA rushing to the police station to help his wealthy friend’s drunken son is a case in point. The police officers there did not follow the most elementary investigative practices, which shows that they were bought by the rich. The doctors too are allegedly actively complicit along with the family members in the tampering with the evidence. The most unfortunate part of this sordid episode is that, in the whole system there was not a single person with a straight spine to stand up against the pressure of the politician and the temptation of lucre. The first thing that strikes any conscientious person is theall-pervasive corruption that has so completely enveloped the system. The system remains inhumanly apathetic to the problems of common people, but shows great alacrity to serve the wealthy, even going out of the way as in this case.  The system has become one that is ever-prepared to serve the interest of the rich and the privileged at the cost of the ordinary masses. The local MLA rushes to the police station in the wee hours of the night to save the rich brat, showing no compunction for the victims;the police did not think even once before stone-walling the investigation of the two lives lost; the two doctors’ conscience stopped pricking them before they acted to do everything to save the culprit; the JJB judges conveniently forgot their allegiance to the legal system before writing the egregious bail terms. 

This is not the first nor will be the last case where the system genuflects to protect the rich and the famous. Remember the Salman Khan black buck killing case in 1998 in Rajasthan. He was convicted by one court and another court suspended his conviction. The legal process continues till today with no tangible result after 26 years. The road accident case involving the same celebrity Salman Khan in September 2002 when he was driving his luxury car in an inebriated state in Mumbaiand ran over four homeless people sleeping on the footpath,resulted in the death of one and serious injuries to the other three persons.The case dragged on for 13 years; the lower court convicted Khan but the High Court acquitted him in 2015, the Maharashtra government has appealed against the HC verdictin the Supreme Court but it is still to be heard after 22 years of the accident. The BMW hit and run casein Delhi involving the grand-son of a high-ranking naval official who killed 6 people including three policemen in 1999, is another case in point. The case dragged on for over a decade before the rich brat was brought to book. The Jessica Lal murder case is another one where the rich and the influential made a mockery of the criminal justice system. All these cases make a brazen display of how our criminal justice system can be bent at will to suit the rich and influential because of its susceptibility to corruption. At every level of the system there are people who are compliant and prepared to do the bidding of the rich.

The second aspect that needs some serious discussion is the question of parenting. The super-rich family of the juvenile gave a powerful luxury Porsche Taycancarwithout teaching him an iota of sense ofresponsibility. He did not have a proper driving license, yet the parents allowed him to drive the car in crowded Pune streets endangering the lives of others. When the accident happened, instead of making the son face the consequences of his actions, the whole family did everything to protect him from the law by indulging unethical practices like offering huge amounts of money to every person in the system, forcing them to compromise. What moral or ethical lesson as parents have they imparted to their son?Had the juvenile’s family any sense of humanity left in them on the night of the accident, they should have enquired about the two young people who lost their lives as a result of their son’s drunken caper. But they did not do any such thing, proving that they are inhumanly self-centred.

Third, where are we heading as a society in which our children are so materially driven that basic family values have long been thrown out of the window?Unfortunately, we are living in a time when our underage children find nothing other than drinking alcohol as a source of celebration. Where is the sense of proportion in Indian families? Is it true that as parents, we have failed to be role models for our children for upholding morality and ethics? It’s high time weponder over these matters and spare a thought about the way we are bringing up our offspring.