india

Updated: Aug 19, 2019 00:47 IST

A Kolkata court on Sunday sent Arsalan Parvez, 22, son of an owner of the Mughlai restaurant chain Arsalan, in police custody till August 29 two days after a Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV) he was driving crashed into a Mercedes on Friday and left two Bangladeshi nationals dead.

Parvez was produced before the court on Sunday and charged under India Penal Code’s sections 279 (rash driving), 304 part-II (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) and 308 (attempt to commit culpable homicide). He was also charged with destruction of public property. He faces a jail term of up to 10 years if convicted.

Police said Parvez was driving the Jaguar F-Pace SUV at a speed of around 90 km per hour on Friday near Park Street when it hit businessman Amit Kajaria’s Mercedes E-220d. Kajaria, 50, who owns restaurants in Kolkata, was driving the sedan, while his wife, Kanika, was seated next to him. Both of them were admitted to a hospital in south Kolkata.

The Mercedes crashed into a police kiosk on a pavement and killed the Bangladeshi nationals, Kazi Mohammad Mainul Alam, 36 and Farhana Islam Tania, 28, a police officer said.

The two were standing under the kiosk since it was raining. Kazi Mohammad Shafi Rahamatullah,36, a relative of Alam, was injured in the accident. The three had come to Kolkata for medical treatment.

Parvez, who ran away from the accident site, was arrested 10 hours later.

Scrutiny of CCTV footage near the accident scene revealed that minutes before the accident the over-speeding Jaguar had crossed red signals on Russel Street, Middleton Street, Jawaharlal Nehru Road and Theatre Road, officers involved in the investigation said.

Parvez’s lawyer, Aritra Bhattacharya, said they have objected to the application of Section 304-II because the defendant’s car did not hit the pedestrians who died. “His vehicle hit the Mercedes which rammed into the kiosk. We also told the court that it was raining on Friday night and the chances of the tyres skidding were very high. The defendant’s car might have had some mechanical failure.”

A forensic department officer said they have to retrieve data from the SUV’s computer-controlled driving system to ascertain under what conditions it crashed into the sedan. “For that, we need help from technicians of Jaguar.”

The SUV Parvez was driving is registered in the name of his father’s company, RAA Arsalan Enterprise Pvt Ltd, the police told the court. His father, Akhtar Parvez, told the police that his son was driving the SUV and claimed he lost control over it because of a mechanical failure.