New Delhi, Sep 17 (PTI) A Delhi court on Wednesday extended till September 27 the judicial custody of the woman who drove the BMW car involved in a crash that left a senior finance ministry official dead and his wife injured in Dhaula Kuan here.
Judicial magistrate Ankit Garg extended the judicial custody of Gaganpreet Kaur, 38, after she was presented in the court.
Senior advocate Ramesh Gupta, appearing for Kaur, moved an application for preservation of the accident’s CCTV footage, for which the court issued a notice and posted the matter for hearing on Thursday.
Gupta argued that an accident case had been converted into a case of culpable homicide not amounting to murder under Section 105 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS).
He said that the erstwhile IPC section corresponding to it was Section 304, which had two parts; the first sub-section provided for maximum imprisonment of life, while the second part had no such punishment.
“The FIR was registered 10 hours after the investigating officer (IO) arrested me. They (police) are saying that Section 304 was invoked as the injured were taken to a faraway hospital. Both families are aggrieved.
"They (the couple) have two children aged 5 and 7; they were also injured along with the husband,” the advocate said in his arguments.
He said that the deputy commissioner of police (DCP) concerned should be made a witness in the case, as he was the first person to meet the two witnesses who narrated the sequence of the accident to him.
Gupta said that according to the sequence of events, the car also hit a bus and the bus also needed to be seized.
“Uske baad wahan pe ek ambulance ruki thi, but usne le jaane se mana kar diya (Thereafter, an ambulance stopped at the spot, but refused to take the injured to a hospital)…Medical van ruki ya nahi isko confirm karna (whether the medical van stopped or not, to confirm that) isn’t it the duty of the DCP,” Gupta argued.
He also claimed that the Investigation Officer's case diary was not paginated.
Gupta said that Kaur made the best efforts to provide relief to the injured; she called her father-in-law, who told her about the hospital.
“The lady herself sat in the van that had stopped, (inadvertently) left her phone in the car. She had to leave her children and husband in the car, who were also injured…There must be a fair investigation,” he said.
Countering the arguments, the complainant’s advocate said that Kaur was not grievously injured and, despite being aware that each minute counted when someone was gravely injured, she insisted that the van driver take the injured to a hospital which was 20 km away.
The advocate claimed that Kaur had a malafide intention.
“Iske baad woman (Kaur) hospital ke ICU mein admit ho jaati hai… 5 ghante ka baad farzi MLC bana rahi hai (After that, Kaur gets herself admitted to the Intensive Care Unit of a hospital. After five hours, she prepares a false medico-legal case (MLC)…
"Ek to bahut tez gaadi chala rahi hai, socho kitni speed hogi ki BMW palat gayi… crore rupees ka gadi chalaoge to khud safe rahoge hi, lekin jisko lagi hai unko to help provide karawoge na (She was driving at such speed that the BMW car turned turtle. If you drive a car worth crores of rupees, then you will be safe, but you have to ensure that help is provided to the injured)," the victim's lawyer said.
The advocate said that the van driver had given a statement that when he was repeatedly told to take the victims to the nearest hospital, Gaganpreet did not listen to him. “Why didn't you make an ambulance call? The base hospital was minutes away,” he said.
The court has posted the matter for further hearing on Saturday.
Kaur was remanded to two days in judicial custody on September 15 after being arrested on charges of culpable homicide not amounting to murder and other offences.
Deputy Secretary in the Department of Economic Affairs, Navjot Singh (52), a resident of Hari Nagar, was killed in the accident on the Ring Road near the Delhi Cantonment Metro station on Sunday afternoon. They were returning home after visiting the Bangla Sahib Gurdwara.
A case has been registered under sections 281 (rash driving), 125B (endangering life or personal safety of others), 105 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) and 238 (causing disappearance of evidence) of the BNS.