Pune Porsche case: Accused even tried to tamper with blood samples at second hospital, claim police

Pune: The prosecution in the Pune Porsche case has told a court here that attempts were made to swap blood samples at a second hospital to save the juvenile accused, but it wasn’t successful.

Submitting additional documents under Section 173(8) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the prosecution said that the Pune police, which first got blood samples of the minor collected at the Sassoon Hospital, suspected that there was a possibility of tampering.

The police then got the teenager’s blood samples collected at the Aundh Government Hospital as a pre-emptive measure, but some of the other accused, including his parents, got a whiff of it, the police informed the court on Tuesday.

The accused people approached the Aundh hospital authorities to swap the samples, but the doctors there refused to cooperate and turned them away, the prosecution claimed.

On May 19, 2024, a Porsche car allegedly driven by a 17-year-old boy in an inebriated condition fatally mowed down two IT professionals, Anish Awadhiya and Ashwini Costa, in Pune’s Kalyani Nagar area.

Subsequent investigations showed that his blood samples were swapped with those of his mother at the Sassoon Hospital to conceal the minor’s alleged intoxicated state at the time of the crash.

“In the same manner in which they tampered with blood samples at Sassoon Hospital, the parents of the juvenile and middleman Ashpak Makandar tried to do so at the Aundh hospital too. But doctors refused to entertain them,” said a crime branch officer.

In the alleged sample swapping matter at Sassoon Hospital, Dr Ajay Taware, head of the forensic department, Medical Officer Shreehari Halnor, and a staffer, Atul Ghatkamble, came under scrutiny, resulting in their arrest.

Besides the three Sassoon staffers, the juvenile’s father, middlemen Makandar and Amar Gaikwad, Aditya Avinash Sood, Ashish Mittal, and Arun Kumar Singh are currently in jail in connection with the alleged blood sample swap.

Arguments are currently being made in the court concerning the framing of charges. Section 173(8) of the CrPC allows for further investigation of an offence even after a chargesheet has already been submitted.