Farmer involved in Undri hit-&-run arrested on charge of culpable homicide

Pune: A 32-year-old farmer was arrested on Wednesday on the charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder, a day after security firm manager Sujitkumar Basantprasad Singh was killed in a hit-and-run while jogging near the Nyati Ebony Society compound wall in Undri on Tuesday morning.
The arrested farmer, Sameer Ganesh Kad, is a resident of Gangotri Complex at Hole Vasti Chowk in Undri. Senior inspector Mansing Patil of the Kalepadal police said, "We have invoked the stringent charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder under the provisions of Section 105 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) against Kad because he sped away after the accident without informing the police."

The SUV driver, during his questioning, told the police that he was going from his farm at Shewalewadi in Hadapsar to his residence at Hole Vasti on Tuesday morning when he lost control over the vehicle and hit the victim from behind. Kad claimed that he sped away out of fear.
Senior inspector Patil said, "We have impounded the Tata Nexon sport utility vehicle (SUV), valued at Rs 15 lakh, belonging to Kad for RTO inspection. An inspection of the SUV revealed that its front portion and the right mirror were completely shattered because Kad crashed the SUV after losing control over the vehicle, but he sped away."
Patil said Kad removed the number plates of the vehicle and concealed them somewhere to escape legal action after the accident. The police would produce him before a magisterial court for seeking custodial remand on Thursday.
Sub-inspector Anil Nimbalkar, the investigating officer in the accident case, said, "We formed two police teams headed by assistant inspector Amit Shete, and policemen Parshuram Pise, Shahid Shaikh and Atul Pandharkar. They undertook the tedious exercise of analysing footage of nearly 100 CCTV cameras from the accident spot to Kadnagar Chowk in Undri. We identified a grey SUV with a two-digit registration number ‘34' in the footage, but its four-digit number was not completely visible."
Nimbalkar said, "We sent an email to the RTO and collected voluminous data of 2,500 Tata Nexon SUVs registered in the last three months and started analysing the same by visiting homes of some vehicle owners in Undri, Mohammadwadi and Handewadi. But there was no breakthrough in the probe because we did not come across a vehicle having ‘34' in the registration number."
He said, "Tireless efforts of our team finally yielded results when we analysed the last footage from Kadnagar Chowk at 4am on Wednesday. "We got the four-digit number of the SUV (MH12/XH-5434). We used the ‘Vahan application' to trace the SUV owner and got Kad's residential address."
Assistant inspector Amit Shete said, "We visited Kad's residence, took him into custody and brought him to the police station for questioning. Kad had purchased the vehicle a year ago."
The police had initially booked the driver involved in the accident for causing the victim's death by negligence and rash driving under the provisions of sections 106 and 281 of the BNS and the Motor Vehicles Act. The charge was amended to culpable homicide not amounting to murder under Section 105 of the BNS.