Bandra accident: Nutritionist denies charges of speeding, speaking on phone

Produced before the magistrate court as her one-day police custody ended on Tuesday, Megha Rawal told the magistrate court that she was unable to see the child crossing the road as she was taking a turn, and the accident was “unfortunate and unintentional”

MUMBAI: Nutritionist Megha Rawal, arrested for allegedly running over an eight-year-old boy in Bandra West, on Tuesday denied that she was speeding or talking on phone when the accident occurred on Sunday afternoon. Produced before the magistrate court as her one-day police custody ended on Tuesday, she told the magistrate court that she was unable to see the child crossing the road as she was taking a turn, and the accident was “unfortunate and unintentional”, denying claims by relatives of the deceased that she was speeding and talking on the phone at the time of the incident.

Megha Rawal is co-founder of a brand that makes health gummies

Rawal, co-founder of a brand that makes health gummies, stays with her husband and their 10-year-old child barely 500 meters from the accident spot. She had visited the farmers’ market on Sunday afternoon, as per her usual routine, and was returning from the market via St John Baptista Road. Around 2.15pm, as she was taking a turn to enter her building, Ansh Gupta, 8, came under her wheels, she said in her statement to the police.

“Rawal said that she was blindsided and could not see the kid crossing. But as soon as she realised that she had hit someone, she immediately halted her Innova Crysta, alighted from the vehicle, and tried to hail an auto to take Ansh to the hospital. When that did not work, she put the boy in her car and drove to the Holy Family Hospital where she stayed for four hours,” a police officer familiar with the matter told Hindustan Times.

Advocates Ankita Singh (partner) and Bhavya Shah, appearing for Rawal, said that the police had failed to produce her call detail records (CDR) showing she was talking on the phone at the time of the incident. Rawal did make a phone call to her husband, they said, but only after the accident and not while driving. The police had invoked section 105 (culpable homicide) of the Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita “only because of mob pressure”, and no grounds had been made out for invocation of the charge, the lawyers said, making detailed submissions opposing any further police custody.

The Bandra police told the court that they had yet to obtain the CDR of Rawal’s mobile phone along with other evidence. They also said that they had scanned through CCTV recordings of the road but the footage was too grainy to determine if she was on the phone.

Advocate Akash Vikram Singh, who appeared on behalf of Ravindra Gupta, the father of the deceased child, supported the police, saying the arrested woman’s further custody was required for investigation.

Gupta, a peanut seller, said, “When I reached the hospital, Sandeep Man Singh (a neighbour) informed me that Rawal was glued to her mobile phone when the accident took place.” The grieving father told the court that Ansh had been conceived through IVF after nearly two decades of marriage. “Despite financial problems, I got my son admitted to a convent school and we dreamt of him becoming a police officer,” he said, demanding the harshest punishment for Rawal.

After hearing the submissions, the court declined to grant further custody of Rawal to the police and remanded her to judicial custody for 14 days.