On 2nd February (Monday), Supreme Court granted bail to three persons accused in the Pune Porsche case of 2024. The order which was pronounced by a bench of Justices BV Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan has been subjected to terms set by the trial court. Ashish Satish Mittal, Aditya Avinash Sood and Amar Santhosh Gaikwad had been imprisoned for eighteen months.
They faced allegations of substituting their own blood samples for those of two minors in the vehicle, apart from the underage driver. These youngsters were intoxicated. Mittal, Sood and Gaikwad are charged with bribery, evidence tampering and forgery under multiple sections of the Prevention of Corruption Act and the Indian Penal Code. Sood’s son was in the back of the four-wheeler and Mittal is the friend of the father of the boy who was also seated in the rear while Gaikwad replaced the blood samples of the juveniles for 3 lakhs.
Judge Nagarathna made strong oral remarks about parental responsibility after delivering the judgement. She pointed out that permitting minors to drink alcohol, giving them cars and encouraging careless celebrations represented a significant social issue. She observed that there was a pattern to these instances, with attempts to reduce criminal consequences, alter medical data and pass on blame. However, she added that the court was refraining from announcing comprehensive conclusions on these elements to prevent prejudicing the ongoing trial.
The justice highlighted, “Father and mother are to be blamed for not having control over their children. If we say anything on that line we are only afraid that it may prejudice the trial against these appellants…Celebration on the basis of substance and then going in a top speed and resulting in killing of innocent people on the road or innocent people sleeping on the road….the law has to catch up on these people.”
The court further stated that it is saddening how careless these parents are, giving their young children fast cars and allowing them to celebrate with drugs and alcohol. She outlined, “Most importantly the parents are responsible for handing over the vehicle to the children and giving them sufficient to have a gala time…This is the problem. Because parents have no time to talk to the children, have a dialogue with them and spend time with the children. So what is the substitute? Money, ATM card. So they go on their own under mobile phone. See, two innocent lives are lost and all these mechanisations. But it’s liberty vs all this.”
The Supreme Court has granted bail to three accused in the Pune Porsche car accident case, where two people were killed due to rash and negligent driving by a juvenile in May 2024. The accused are alleged to have helped the juvenile’s family tamper with evidence by swapping blood…
— ANI (@ANI) February 2, 2026
The bench warned that any violation of the terms would result in the termination of the granted bail. The trio had been denied bail by the Bombay High Court in December of last year. The court ruled that providing bail to financially secure defendants in the case could raise the possibility of witness tampering and impede the administration of justice.
A 17-year-old boy fatally knocked down two IT professionals in Kalyani Nagar area of Pune on 19th May 2024, leading to nationwide anger. The victims, Aneesh Awadhiya and Ashwini Koshta were from Madhya Pradesh. A member of the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB) granted him bail within hours and told him to a 300-word essay on traffic safety, triggering further outrage. However, a review was demanded by the authorities after which he was sent to an observation home and was later set free on the directives of the Bombay High Court.
Meanwhile, 10 defendants, including his parents Vishal Agarwal and Shivani Agarwal, doctors Ajay Tawre and Shreehari Halnor, Sassoon Hospital’s staffer Atul Ghatkamble, Aditya Avinash Sood, Ashish Satish Mittal and Arun Kumar Singh alongside two middlemen were thrown behind bars in the blood sample switching case.
