Pune Porsche Case: Parents of Accused Minor Driver Move Bombay High Court Over ‘Illegal Arrest’

Pune, 10th February 2025: Shivani and Vishal Agarwal, parents of a minor involved in a fatal drunk-driving incident in Kalyani Nagar, have filed a petition in the Bombay High Court, alleging that their constitutional rights were violated due to their illegal arrest. The couple is accused of tampering with their son’s blood samples to obstruct the investigation into the accident, which resulted in the deaths of two people. The accident claimed the lives of two young IT professionals after their bike was hit by a Porsche car driven by the minor boy.

The petition was presented before a bench comprising Justice Sarang Kotwal and Justice S.M. Modak. The court has referred this petition, along with 40 similar cases, to a larger bench for review. Vishal Agarwal, a prominent construction businessman, and his wife, Shivani, were arrested in July 2024 after police investigations revealed they had attempted to manipulate evidence by altering their son’s blood sample before his medical examination.

According to police reports, Shivani allegedly provided her own blood sample in place of her son’s under the supervision of Dr. Srihari Halnor, Chief Medical Officer of Sassoon Hospital’s Emergency Department. Dr. Halnor is said to have collected the sample on Vishal Agarwal’s instructions. Following these revelations, both parents were arrested and charged with evidence tampering.

However, the Agarwals’ legal representatives, Siddharth Agarwal and Advocate Narayan Rokade, argue that the arrests were conducted without following proper legal procedures. The defence claims that the chargesheet filed by the police lacks a clearly stated justification for the arrests, with the section meant to document the reasons left blank. They contend that this omission indicates the absence of a solid legal basis for detaining the couple.