The teen accused in the Pune Porsche accident case must be released from detention immediately, the Bombay High Court ruled today. The 17-year-old boy’s late-night dash in a Porsche on May 19 left two 24-year-old engineers dead and sparked nationwide outrage.
The judgment by the bench of Justice Bharati Dangre and Justice Majusha Deshpande came on a habeus corpus petition by the boy’s aunt, who had sought his release from a government observation home. The teen will now be under the care of his aunt, as his parents and grandfather have been arrested for an attempted cover-up.
Late on May 19, a speeding Porsche driven by the teen had hit a bike. Engineers Ashwini Kostha and Aneesh Awadhiya, who were on the bike, were killed on the spot. Eyewitnesses claimed that the teen, who was with two friends, was heavily drunk at the time of the accident. CCTV footage from a pub he had visited later showed him drinking alcohol with his friends. The teen was thrashed by the crowd that had gathered at the accident spot and handed over to cops.
Within 15 hours of the accident, the teen, son of a prominent Pune realtor, was out on bail. The bail conditions set by the Juvenile Justice Board were widely seen as flimsy and sparked widespread outrage — he was asked to write a 300-word essay on accidents, work with traffic police for 15 days and seek counselling for his drinking habit.