india

Updated: Aug 22, 2019 11:10 IST

The luxury SUV involved in an accident in Kolkata on the intervening night of August 16 and 17 that caused the death of two Bangladeshi nationals was being driven by Raghib Parvez, the elder son of Akhtar Parvez, owner of Arsalan, one of the city’s and the country’s best-known Mughlai restaurants, and not Arsalan Parvez, the younger son, Kolkata Police announced on Wednesday afternoon shortly after arresting the accused.

Joint commissioner of police (crime) Murlidhar Sharma said Raghib Parvez, 24, escaped to Dubai after the accident and returned to the city on Wednesday.

It isn’t clear why Arsalan Parvez, after whom the restaurant, famed nationwide for its biryani is named, confessed to having driven the car on August 17. He was arrested and sent to police custody till August 29 by a city court over the weekend. “We also arrested Mohammad Hamza, a maternal uncle of Raghib Parvez, on charges of giving shelter to the accused and helping him escape to Dubai,” said Sharma.

The police discovered that Raghib Parvez was the driver using the entertainment system of the vehicle he was driving (a Jaguar) and CCTV camera footage.

“We cracked the case after going through the Jaguar’s infotainment and communication data in which the phone number of the person who drove the vehicle before the crash was recorded. That’s how we found Raghib’s number; we matched his social media profile photo with the footage recorded by security cameras at the crash site,” said Sharma.

Meanwhile, other footage showed Raghib Parvez entering the vehicle alone “ at 11.30 pm on August 16 and driving out,” Sharma said.

Scrutiny of CCTV footage earlier revealed that the Jaguar F-Pace SUV jumped a few traffic signals before crashing into businessman Amit Kajaria’s Mercedes E-220d sedan. Kajaria and his wife Kanika are admitted in a private hospital in south Kolkata.

So severe was the impact that the Mercedes crashed into a police kiosk on the pavement at the intersection of Loudon Street and Theatre Road. Two Bangladeshi nationals, Kazi Mohammad Mainul Alam (36) and Farhana Islam Tania (28), who were standing under the kiosk since it was raining, were killed. Kazi Mohammad Shafi Rahamatullah (36), a relative of Alam, was injured. The three were in Kolkata for medical treatment.

The Jaguar was moving from west to east while the Mercedes was travelling from north to south. Arsalan Parvez was arrested 10 hours after the crash.

Police charged Arsalan under IPC sections 279 (rash driving), 304 part-II (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) and 308 (attempt to commit culpable homicide) apart from destruction of public property. Now that the police have made a new arrest the prosecution will frame fresh charges.