The case of Vedant Agarwal in the Pune accident, which has shocked the nation, exemplifies the systemic issues within our justice system. A 17 year spoilt brat of super rich indulgent dad drives his 2 crore Porsche at 160km/hr speed at the dead of the night on Pune streets, that causes death of two young IT professionals Aneesh Awadhia and Ashwini Koshta, both from middle class family in Madhya Pradesh.
Our police and judiciary, under the influence of the local MLA from the Ajit Pawar party, ensures that Vedant Agarwal’s medical report is clean. We all know that money talks, but its brazen influence was evident when the Juvenile Justice Board judge, the “learned” Dr. L.N. Dhanwade, took a very lenient view. Vedant was released on bail by the “learned” judge and was asked to write 300 words essay on road safety and was also told to do social work for 15 days.
दो लोगों के जान की वैल्यू सिर्फ 300 शब्दों का निबंध! #PuneAccident#VedantAgarwal pic.twitter.com/XCdGE2x387
— Swati Awasthi 🇮🇳 (@awasthiswati201) May 22, 2024
This was his punishment for snuffing out the lives of two young people. The boy’s indulgent father Vishal Agarwal who had all the money to buy 2 crore Porsche car but did not deem it important to get his car registered, escaped to Aurangabad to evade arrest. He would have succeeded in his mission but for the outcry on social media and, for a change, in the “mainstream media”.
After so many years I see Arnab in his old style pf journalism, which isn’t bad! #PuneAccident pic.twitter.com/daolLDCseU
— Samina Shaikh 🇮🇳 (@saminaUFshaikh) May 22, 2024
If Maharashtra Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis is to believed Vedant who is a minor will be tried as an adult. This is because Juvenile Justice Act now considers anyone above 16 who has committed a heinous crime to be tried as an adult.
We know public memory is short. No one now remembers the collapse of the illegal hoarding in Mumbai that killed 16 people. In this case one can only hope that it reaches its logical conclusion and the guilty are punished. Unfortunately, in our country, we are accustomed to this ‘chalta hai’ “चलता है” attitude anyway.”
