After experts suggested that the altered blood samples in the Pune Porsche crash case were that of a woman, speculations of the changed samples being that of the teen driver’s mother arose. Police are now trying to investigate two things—the identity of the ‘mystery woman’ seen with the teen driver at the hospital and the DNA of the swapped blood sample.
As the never-ending saga of twists and turns continued in the case on Friday, a police official mentioned in the court that the CCTV footage from Pune’s Sassoon Hospital showed that the teen driver was accompanied by his parents, an unidentified woman, and two elderly people.
According to sources, police are seeking to understand who was the ‘mystery woman’ and check if it was her blood samples that were used to tamper with the accused’s blood samples.
Sources said police were also trying to verify claims of the blood sample being swapped with that of the mother of the accused.
Meanwhile, the teen’s mother, Shivani Agrawal, has been on the run for more than 48 hours now. She went incommunicado after police recorded her statement. Sources said she has fled Pune.
Official sources said police would verify if the replaced blood sample was that of the mother by matching it with the teen’s DNA.
The mother of the juvenile accused, Shivani, had come to the fore after a video was widely circulated on social media claiming that her son uploaded a rap video on the day he was granted bail. But, she had clarified that the video featuring her son is “fake”.
According to News18 sources, the Pune crime branch has also summoned some nurses, who are members of the staff at the Sassoon hospital. They are being questioned regarding the swapping of the blood samples, they added.
Sassoon hospital doctors submitted their report to the probe panel on Wednesday (May 29). The Maharashtra medical education (MME) department formed the committee headed by Dr Pallavi Sapale, dean of Mumbai-based Grants Medical College, on May 27 after the police claimed that the teenager’s blood samples were discarded and replaced with another person’s samples, which showed no traces of alcohol, at Pune’s Sassoon General Hospital.
Police have arrested Dr Ajay Taware, head of the state-run hospital’s forensic medicine department, chief medical officer Dr Shrihari Halnor and staff member Atul Ghatkamble in connection with the incident.
Two IT professionals in their 20s were killed after their motorcycle was hit by a speeding Porsche, allegedly driven by a 17-year-old, in the early hours of May 19 in Pune’s Kalyani Nagar area. According to police, the teenager, son of builder Vishal Agarwal, was drunk at the time.
