Police say parents let teen drive for 3 yrs without licence
The 17-year-old boy, who crushed management student Siddharth Sharma on April 4, 2016, under the wheels of his Mercedes car, was allowed to drive without a licence for three years by his parents, reads the chargesheet police filed on Friday.
Police said the teenager, who was four days short of turning 18 on the day of the accident, was given the keys of luxury cars, including Porsche, Mercedes and Honda City, and allowed to drive around Delhi by his parents, noted the 23-page chargesheet filed against the teenager’s parents and family driver in connection with the hit-and-run case which killed 32-year-old Sharma in north Delhi’s Civil Lines.
In a first, police chargesheeted the parents because they did not stop their child from driving the vehicle. The boy had been driving since the last three years without a licence and had violated traffic rules. He had been challaned twice for over-speeding and once for driving without a seat belt.
“The Mercedes, which crushed management student Siddharth Sharma to death, is jointly registered in the name of his parents. The father and mother are equally responsible for allowing the boy to take the car,” said a police official privy to the investigation.
On Saturday, a Delhi court listed the case for further consideration on April 27.
The chargesheet, filed in the court of metropolitan magistrate Shefali Tandon Barnala, mentioned that call detail records of the teenager and his father were examined and it was found that the boy had spoken to his father at the time of the incident. Also, the father had paid ₹50,000 in a hospital to admit Sharma, while the police were trying to trace him.
“The father has been made an accused for concealing information and misguiding the course of investigation. Along with the parents, the family driver is also an accused for making contradictory statements in the court,” reads the chargesheet.
The investigation officer said the father, who runs a business of wedding cards, tried to mislead police by convincing the driver to lie to the police to save his son.
“Initially, the driver had said that he was the one who was driving the Mercedes. But he later got scared by the wide media coverage and death of the victim and admitted that he was not driving the vehicle. This was supported by the eyewitnesses,” police said.
The parents and the driver have been made accused under sections 304 (punishment for culpable homicide not amounting to murder), 201 (causing disappearance of evidence), 203 (giving false information) and 109 (Punishment of abetment if the act abetted is committed in consequence) of the IPC and section 5/180 of motor vehicles act.
The CCTV footage of the accident shows Sharma crossing the road and being flung at least 15 metres in the air after being hit by the speeding Mercedes.