The Pune police, investigating the Porsche crash case, on Tuesday (May 28) seized a Mercedes car owned by the family of the minor accused. This car was allegedly used to abduct the driver, Gangadhar Herikrub, in an attempt to coerce him into taking the blame for the accident that resulted in the deaths of two engineers on May 19.
The 42-year-old Gangadhar Herikrub, who lives in Kesnand area of the city and native of Karnataka’s Gulbarga, has filed a First Information Report (FIR) with the police, claiming that the minor’s grandfather forced him to sit in a car on the way home from the Yerwada police station, where he had been questioned about the Pune Porsche accident.
After bringing Herikrub to their bungalow, the grandfather and father of the minor are said to have taken his cell phone and imprisoned him. Subsequently, the driver was allegedly urged to accept responsibility for the Porsche car accident by them.
The Pune police informed the court that they examined the Mercedes-Benz E-Class, which was used to kidnap the driver and was approximately priced at Rs 40 lakh. The car is dolomite brown in colour. “The two accused are not forthcoming in sharing information about the crime hence it’s important that they are taken in police custody and probed in detail about the crime,” police submitted to the court.
Police suspects CCTV footage tampering
The police said that a preliminary analysis of the CCTV footage seized from the accused’s house shows that it had been tampered with. “We need to interrogate the accused about the tampering and find out if anyone else is involved in the tampering of the evidence,” police said.
The minor’s grandfather has denied any kidnapping claims, telling the court he was in Delhi when the accident occurred and that he flew to Pune after hearing about the Porsche accident.
The investigating officer appeared in Pune court with the minor accused’s father and grandfather in order to request a week-long police custody to look into the allegations of kidnapping and forcible detention of the family’s driver. They were placed into police detention until May 31.