Gurgaon: Suraj Sehrawat, the 19-year-old accused of driving a BMW that killed a
pregnant woman and the driver of her car, will be part of an
identification parade.
This, so far, is the only progress
that the Gurgaon Police has made in a case that has provoked public
anger and media attention.
A court in Gurgaon yesterday agreed
that Mr Sehrawat, who was arrested briefly on Tuesday before being
granted bail, can be presented before eyewitnesses. The husband of the
victim, Kshama Chopra, will be asked to identify him.
But 12
days after the accident took place, that appears to be the only
possibility of evidence against Mr Sehrawat. Much of the outrage among
residents in and around Delhi is that this should not be a tough case to
crack.
Mr Sehrawat was in a BMW owned by his father, a car
dealer with political aspirations, who lives in Gurgaon. On the night
of May 5, the BMW, reportedly racing at over 100 km per hour, collided
with a Tata Indigo at the IFFCO Chowk intersection in Gurgaon. The car
that was hit had five passengers: Kshama Chopra, three months pregnant;
her parents and husband; and the car's driver. Kshama and the driver
died. Her husband and her parents are in hospital.
The BMW had
two people - Mr Sehrawat and his friend, a student named Daksh Jaiswal
who has so far given the police conflicting accounts of who was driving
the car. After the accident, an eye-witness took the other passengers of
the Tata Indigo to hospital. That witness - crucial to the case- has
not been traced by the police.
The police has asked for
permission to conduct a blood test on Mr Sehrawat and to collect the
clothes he was wearing on the night of the accident. Both will be
checked against evidence collected from the BMW. But for five days after
the accident, the police took no action. The owner of the BMW was not
identified - the police claims it took a while because the car had a
Chandigarh license plate. No attempt was made to register a case against
Mr Sehrawat's father, the owner of the car.
Their actions have
so far made the Sehrawats appear like a powerful family trying to
circumvent the law. Mr Sehrawat was missing till he surrendered in court
on Tuesday. He was escorted by 12 bouncers, who got aggressive with
reporters and cameramen trying to cover the case.
Then, on May
12, a man named Rajesh, who allegedly works for Mr Sehrawat's father,
surrendered to the police, saying he was driving the BMW. The police and
the court handling the case dismissed this claim.
In an email
sent on May 13 to a friend, Kshama's husband shared his desperation over
the pitiful state of the police investigation.
"You have to
stand in front of a speeding BMW to feel what I felt when I saw her," he
wrote from hospital. "Is this how cheap life is?"
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