Pune luxury car accident probe continues

The recent luxury car accident here that resulted in the deaths of two young IT professionals took yet another startling turn after it emerged that the blood sample of the accused 17-year-old teenager may have been replaced with that of his mother by doctors at the city’s Sassoon General Hospital.

According to government and police sources, the blood samples of two other occupants in the car at the time of the May 19 crash were also replaced at the hospital by blood samples of their kin in order to get the drunken teenagers (including the accused 17-year-old driver) off the hook.

Pune police sources said Shrihari Halnor, the chief medical officer who was later arrested and suspended for having changed the blood sample of the accused teenager who was driving the car, had reportedly taken the sample of the boy’s mother, Shivani Agarwal, who was present at the hospital, and thrown the juvenile’s sample in the dustbin.

Sources said the three-member committee appointed by the State Medical Education Department to probe the manipulation of the juvenile driver’s blood sample had found that the blood samples of a woman and two men were collected at the hospital that day.

Dr. Halnor had been recently arrested along with Ajay Taware, head of Sassoon’s run hospital’s forensic medicine department and staffer Atul Ghatkamble for manipulating the blood samples in exchange of cash in order to show that the teenager was not inebriated. A court on Thursday extended their police custody to June 5.

While the two doctors and the staffer were suspended, Sassoon Hospital dean Vinayak Kale was sent on forced leave after the three-member panel referred to his “negligent” handling of the case.