After the Bombay high court passed an order for the release of the 17-year-old boy accused in the Pune luxury car accident that took two innocent lives, a senior official from the Pune police department said that they will approach the Supreme Court against the order. The decision to move the top court came after an approval was received from Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde who had promised swift justice to the victim’s family last week.
On June 25, a division bench of judges, Justice Bharti Dangre and Justice Manjusha Deshpande of the Bombay HC ordered the immediate release of the minor terming the Juvenile Justice Board’s (JJB) order to detain the minor in the juvenile observation home as “illegal”. On the court’s order the juvenile walked out of the observation home and his custody was given to his paternal aunt who had appealed in a petition for his bail.
The accident happened on May 19 when two 24-year-old IT engineers, Anish Awadhiya and his friend Ashwini Koshta died on the spot after a speeding luxury car driven by the minor under the influence of alcohol rammed their motorcycle. The incident happened around 2.30 a.m. at Pune’s Kalyani Nagar area. The minor was released on bail the same day within a few hours after the accident and was only asked to write a 300 word essay on road safety at Pune’s Yerwada police station. Only after a huge public outcry and protest emerged in the city, on May 22, the JJB ordered to take the minor into custody and sent him to observation home. His parents and grandfather remain arrested in the same case under different charges of abduction of witnesses and tampering with evidence.
On June 21, the minor’s paternal aunt had moved the high court and filed a habeas corpus petition claiming that as per the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act 2015, the minor boy could not have been taken away from the custody of his grandfather and put in an observation home. On June 25, the judges bench observed that the custody was illegal and passed the order to release the minor under the custody of his aunt.
