In a new development in the Pune Porsche car accident case, police have arrested a peon of Sassoon General Hospital who allegedly collected a bribe of ₹3 lakh meant for two senior doctors who replaced the juvenile driver’s blood samples with another person’s samples that showed no traces of alcohol. On Monday, the Pune Police’s Crime Branch recovered the ₹3 lakh cash, News18 reported.
The Pune police, on Monday, arrested two doctors of the Sassoon General Hospital on charges of manipulating the blood sample of the 17-year-old Pune teen involved in the death of two IT professionals.
The accident had taken place around 2.15 am on May 19 in the Kalyani Nagar area, when the minor at the wheels of a Porsche crashed into a motorcycle, killing Anis Awadhiya and Ashwini Costa.
After the Pune District Court granted Pune Police custody of the accused father in the driver abduction case related to the car crash case, he was placed under judicial custody at Yerwada Jail.
The grandfather of the minor charged, the accused doctor, and the accused hospital staff were also taken before the Crime Branch.
Police have detained the three suspects in the blood sample manipulation case until May 30. The two doctors Atul Ghatakmalbe, a fellow Sassoon Hospital employee, and Dr. Ajay Taware, the head of the department of forensic medicine and chief medical officer Dr. Srihari Halnor are among the accused.
As per the Pune Police officials, another development in the case is that they have arrested additional suspects for possible participation in tampering with the young accused’s blood sample. The accused has been identified as Atul Ghatkamble and he is also an employee at the Sassoon Hospital.
On Monday, the police arrested two Sassoon doctors Dr Ajay Taware, Dr Shrihari Halnor and a Sassoon staffer Atul Ghatkamble on the charges of destruction of evidence by changing the sample collected from the minor. A senior officer said that the probe in this context was launched on Sunday after police received a report from the forensics facility on the DNA analysis of three samples including one taken — as police commissioner Amitesh Kumar said — “secretly”.
Explaining how the blood sample’s destruction came to light, a senior officer said, “The first blood sample of the minor was taken around 11 am at Sassoon General Hospital on May 19. Because of certain inputs about possible tampering, we pressed for another sample collection at 6 pm which was taken at District Hospital in Aundh. The next day, on May 20, the swabs from these two samples were sent to a state run forensics facility for DNA analysis. On May 21, after the father of the minor was arrested, we sent his (the father’s) sample for DNA analysis. The reports of the DNA analysis of these three samples were received on May 26.
Reports suggested that the father of the minor was unrelated to the Sassoon swab. The swab from Aundh hospital matched him. This also suggests that the doctors at Sassoon Hospital changed the sample between May 19 and the time we took the swab on the 20th. During initial questioning, the doctors said they had discarded the sample in a dustbin and that it was picked up along with other biomedical waste. The chances of its recovery are not there. Ghatkamble’s primary role was the exchange of money.”
When asked why the second sample was taken and whether there was any intelligence inputs about tampering with the sample, Amitesh Kumar told the media, “After looking at the report of the physical examination around 11 am and with some intelligence reports we were receiving, we realised that we can not rule out the possibility of tampering. That is why a second sample was taken secretly to be tested at a different hospital.”
