Porsche case: Realtor couple's police custody extended till June 14 to probe missing blood sample

Pune, June 10 (IANS) A court here on Monday extended the police custody of Pune realtor Vishal S. Agarwal and his wife Shivani V. Agarwal till June 14 in the Porsche car crash in which their 17-year-old son was involved, leading to the death of two techies. 

The Agarwal couple was presented before the court for the case concerning alleged destruction of evidence and swapping of blood samples of their son with his mother's (Shivani), hours after the May 19 accident in Kalyani Nagar area of the city.

While Agarwal and his father, Surendrakumar B. Agarwal, were nabbed for complicity in the case, besides abducting their driver and forcing him to own up responsibility for the car crash, Shivani was arrested on June 1 for replacing the minor son's blood sample with her own sample.

Additionally, another accused, Ashfak Makandar, a conduit in the entire deal who brokered the deal between the accused doctors of the government-run Sassoon General Hospital -- where the blood samples were initially collected -- was presented before the same court and remanded to police custody till Friday. 

Seeking extension of the Agarwal couple’s police remand, the public prosecutor said that the police need to investigate where they had disposed of the blood samples of the minor accused.

Besides, the prosecution said that Makandar had allegedly collected Rs 4 lakh from Agarwal's driver, of which Rs 3 lakhs was given to the Sassoon doctors for carrying out the blood sample swap, and they needed to find out if he (Makandar) was acting at someone’s behest.

The police have already recovered Rs 3 lakh from one of the accused medicos, Dr. Srihar Halnor and a peon Atul Ghatkamble, and now they need to trace the remaining amount, plus the involvement of any more persons involved with them, who exactly threw away the minor's blood sample and where, said the police.

However, the Agarwals' lawyer Prashant Patil argued that his clients had already spent many days in police custody and there was no requirement for further custodial interrogation, but if needed they could be called again for a probe. 

Meanwhile, the minor accused boy is in detention at a juvenile correctional home in Pune till June 12, for the accident that killed IT professionals Ashwini Koshtha and her friend Anish Awadhiya, both 24 and hailing from Madhya Pradesh.