Utsav Bhasin granted bail

Utsav Bhasin, the 19-year-old son of an industrialist charged with mowing down a motorcyclist with his car, was granted bail after spending over five months in jail, reports Bhadra Sinha.

Utsav Bhasin, the 19-year-old son of an industrialist charged with mowing down a motorcyclist with his car, was granted bail on Friday after spending over five months in jail.

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A Supreme Court bench of Justices S.B. Sinha and M.K. Sharma accepted Bhasin’s bail plea and asked him to furnish a personal bond of Rs 50,000 and sought two sureties of the same amount.

Bhasin (in picture) has been in jail since the September 2008 incident after Delhi High Court turned down his bail plea. He was booked under Section 304 of the IPC (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) on the charge that his car dragged the victim for several yards after knocking him down.

He was allegedly driving the BMW when it hit two men on a motorcycle in the morning of September 11, near Moolchand flyover. One of them succumbed to his injuries later.

The apex court granted him bail after his counsel Arun Jaitley dismissed the police allegations and said the victims were never dragged by his client’s car. “The motorcyclist’s shirt got entangled in the side view mirror of the car and he fell off,” he said adding that if the car had hit the bike, its air bag would have been inflated.

Jaitley denied Bhasin had fled from the spot. “The police permitted him to leave because a girl was in his company,” he said.

The Delhi Police counsel failed to justify why the case fell under Section 304 IPC that calls for life imprisonment.