Bombay HC orders release of Congress MP's son arrested in hit-and-run case

In an interim order on Wednesday, the Bombay High Court directed that Congress Rajya Sabha member Chandrakant Handore's son Ganesh, arrested in a hit-and-run case in which a person was injured, be released from jail immediately.

The HC deprecated the police action of invoking the attempt to commit culpable homicide charge against Ganesh Handore, who was allegedly driving the car at the time of the accident, and called it a "classic case" of misuse of a legal provision.

Handore was arrested in the first week of October by the Govandi police in Mumbai in connection with the hit-and-run case in suburban Chembur, in which a person was critically injured.

A division bench of justices Revati Mohite Dere and Prithviraj Chavan noted that initially Handore was booked only on charges of rash and negligent driving, but the non-bailable charge of attempting to commit culpable homicide was invoked against him later.

The bench directed the police to file an affidavit in response to Handore's plea that his arrest was illegal. The court said it would hear the petition sometime in November and until then, in an interim order, directed that the hit-and-run case accused be released.

Handore, currently in jail under judicial custody, had approached the HC through advocates Rajiv Chavan and Ashwin Thool seeking a quashing of his remand order while holding that his arrest was illegal.

In the plea, he sought interim relief and release from judicial custody. Advocate Chavan told the court that initially his client was charged with only bailable offences, but Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita section 110 (attempt to commit culpable homicide), which is non-bailable, was added later.

Chavan claimed Handore was medically unfit and suffering from certain serious ailments.

The bench, after perusing the case, said it was doubtful if section 110 of the BNS was applicable in the matter. "This is clearly a case of rash and negligent driving. He was not drunk and driving. If it is applied in this, then you will have to add in all cases of accident. If you start catching people like this then what will happen? This is a classic case of misuse," the court noted.

The accident occurred in the early hours of 5 October, when Handore was reportedly driving from Chembur (West) to the eastern part of the central suburb. According to Govandi police, as Handore neared Acharya College on Narayan Gajanan Acharya Marg, his car struck a motorcycle rider, Gopal Arote, a local resident.

Instead of assisting a seriously injured Arote, Handore fled the scene, leaving the victim on the road in a bloodied and helpless state, according to the police. While Arote was later admitted in the ICU of a hospital, police traced the car based on CCTV footage of the area.

Handore reportedly felt dizzy at Govandi police station and was subsequently admitted to the state-run J.J. Hospital in central Mumbai after doctors noted that his blood pressure had spiked.

He later sought bail from a sessions court claiming he was implicated in the case. His bail plea was, however, rejected by the sessions court. Handore's counsel Chavan on Wednesday told the HC that this was only a case of rash and negligent driving, and not of drunken driving.