Pune Porsche crash: Mother of accused teen walks out of jail days after SC grants interim bail
Pune (PTI): The mother of a 17-year-old boy involved in the Pune Porsche crash, in which two persons lost their lives, walked out of jail on Saturday, four days after the Supreme Court granted her interim bail.
She is the first among the 10 accused arrested in the alleged blood sample-swapping case to be released on bail.
The others in custody include the teenager's father, Sassoon Hospital doctors Ajay Taware and Shrihari Halnor, hospital staffer Atul Ghatkamble, two middlemen, and three others.
A Porsche allegedly driven by a 17-year-old boy in an inebriated state fatally knocked down two IT professionals on a two-wheeler in Pune's Kalyani Nagar in the early hours of May 19 last year.
The boy's mother is accused of swapping her blood sample with that of her son to conceal his inebriation at the time of the accident.
While granting the mother interim bail, the Supreme Court had directed a Pune court to set the bail conditions. Accordingly, the district and sessions court heard arguments from both sides on Friday.
Special public prosecutor Shishir Hiray represented the state, while advocates Angad Gill and Dhvani Shah appeared for the woman.
Advocate Hiray said, "We sought conditions such as barring her from staying in Pune district, a passport seizure, mandatory police station attendance, and keeping her mobile location on at all times."
Additional sessions judge Amol Shinde, however, rejected the prosecution's plea to restrict her from staying in Pune but accepted other conditions.
The defence lawyers opposed the condition of her staying out of Pune, citing her husband's custody and the need for her presence in the city to assist in the legal proceedings. They also objected to the proposed Rs 5 lakh surety and daily police station visits.
"We argued that since the chargesheet has been filed and no recovery is pending from her, such strict conditions are unwarranted," the defence counsel said.
The court accepted the arguments and imposed standard bail conditions, including a personal bond of Rs 1 lakh, submission of her passport to the investigating officer, mandatory mobile tower location sharing, and a ban on leaving India without court permission.
The court has also barred the woman from disclosing her identity for three months and asked her to report to the police station every Wednesday.
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
