Pune crash: Teen's father, grandfather get bail in driver's kidnapping case

A Pune court on Tuesday granted bail to the father and the grandfather of the juvenile involved in the Porsche car crash, in a case pertaining to alleged kidnapping and wrongful confinement of their family driver after the fatal accident in May.

A Judicial Magistrate (First Class) granted bail to the 17-year-old boy's father Vishal Agarwal, a prominent builder, and his grandfather, who were arrested in May-end.

According to police, the teen's father and the grandfather allegedly kidnapped their family driver after he left a police station on May 19 at 11 pm, hours after the crash, wrongfully confined him at their bungalow and tried to force him to admit that he, and not the juvenile, was behind the wheels when the accident took place.

A Porsche car driven by the 17-year-old boy allegedly in a drunken state fatally knocked down two motorbike-borne software engineers in Pune's Kalyani Nagar area in the early hours of May 19. Advocate Prashant Patil, a defence lawyer, informed that his clients were granted bail by the court in the alleged kidnapping and wrongful confinement case.

"My clients will cooperate with the investigative agency and shall abide by stringent (bail) conditions of the court," Patil said. Last month, a court granted bail to Agarwal, arrested on May 21, in a case pertaining to the Juvenile Justice Act.

The builder was booked under relevant sections of the Motor Vehicles Act (MVA) and the Juvenile Justice Act (JJA) for failing to do his duty as a guardian'.

On June 25, the Bombay High Court directed that the boy be released from an observation home, saying the Juvenile Justice Board's (JJB) order on his detention was illegal.