Bandra Fatal Crash: Court Remands SUV Driver to 14 Days Judicial Custody

A magistrate court on Tuesday remanded a 44-year-old nutritionist into 14 days of judicial custody after she allegedly ran her SUV over an eight-year-old child crossing a road in Bandra last Sunday.

Magistrate E T Ingale rejected a request from the police to extend the custody of the accused, Megha Rawal. The decision came after investigators informed the court that they had found no additional links or material during her initial one-day police custody, which concluded on Tuesday.

Rawal's bail application is scheduled to be heard before a sessions court on Wednesday.

While opposing the extension of police custody, Rawal's defence lawyers, Ankita Singh and Bhavya Shah, submitted that no call data record (CDR) showed she was on a phone call while driving or at the time of the accident. They further argued that there were no grounds to invoke Section 105 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita for culpable homicide not amounting to murder, noting that such stringent charges are typically reserved for extreme recklessness, such as drunk driving.

Police stated that CCTV footage recovered from the scene was grainy and could not verify whether Rawal had been using her mobile phone at the time of the incident. Her lawyers maintained that she placed a call to her husband only after realising that her vehicle had struck the child.