The Maharashtra government on Tuesday set up a three-member committee to probe the alleged manipulation of the blood samples of the juvenile driver involved in the Porsche crash at the Sassoon General Hospital in Pune. The development comes a day after the arrest of two doctors and an employee of the Pune-based hospital in connection with the alleged manipulation of the blood sample.
According to news agency PTI, Medical Education Commissioner Rajiv Nivatkar on Monday issued the order appointing the dean of Grant Medical College and JJ group of hospitals Dr Pallavi Sapale as the chairperson of the committee. The other members of the panel include Dr Gajanan Chavan, professor of the forensic medicine department of Grant Medical College, and Dr Sudhir Chowdhary, Special Duty Officer at Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar Government Medical College and Super Speciality Hospital.
The committee has been asked to visit Pune on Tuesday.
The commissioner has also directed Dr Vinayak Kale, Dean of Sassoon General Hospital, to cooperate with the committee in the probe, as per the order.
On Monday, Pune Police arrested Dr Ajay Taware, head of the Sassoon Hospital’s Forensic Medicine department, Dr Shrihari Halnor, the chief medical officer, and the staffer Atul Ghatkamble who works under Dr Taware. The trio was produced before court on Monday which remanded them in police custody till May 30.
Seeking their remand, the police told the court that they had found that the accused had taken bribes to change the samples.
“The father of the minor has been named as an accused on charges of changing the sample. Technical evidence suggests that the father was in direct contact with Dr Taware.”
Kumar said police investigation has revealed Dr Halnor collected the minor’s blood samples and threw them in a dustbin at the Sassoon Hospital. Then as a part of the criminal conspiracy involving Dr Taware, the blood sample of another person was sent to the forensic lab with the minor’s name on it, he said.
The two doctors and the hospital staffer were charged under IPC sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), 467 (forgery), 201 (destruction of evidence), 213 (taking gift or something else to screen an offender from punishment), and 214 (offering gift or restoration of property to screen an offender).
Explaining how the blood sample’s destruction came to light, a senior officer told The Indian Express that 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 the 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, the police sent the father’s sample for DNA analysis. The reports of the DNA analysis of these three samples were received on May 26. “The 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 May 20,” the official said.
Aneesh Awadhiya and Ashwini Koshta, two young engineers working in Pune, were killed after a speeding Porsche hit them from behind in the Kalyani Nagar area on May 19. Police said that the juvenile driving the Porsche was intoxicated at the time of the incident.