Court rejects bail for hit and run convict Pereira

By IANS

Mumbai : The Bombay High Court Friday rejected the bail application of 21-year-old businessman Alistair Pereira, a day after it upped his jail term from six months to three years for mowing down seven people in a hit and run accident last year.


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Chief Justice Swantanter Kumar had taken a stern view of a lower court handing a six-month sentence to Pereira and Thursday sentenced him to three years rigorous imprisonment.

Holding him guilty of culpable homicide not amounting to murder, the chief justice had said: “Pereira deserves no uncalled for sympathy”.

Pereira has been in the high security Arthur Road Jail for undertrials since Thursday evening and is likely to move the Supreme Court for bail, his lawyers said.

A sessions court in April this year had let off the 21-year-old businessman lightly with a six-month sentence, holding him guilty only for rash driving. The lower court too had fined him Rs.500,000.

The verdict of the lower court had met with outrage with many alleging lapses by the investigating police official and the prosecution.

The investigating agency had failed to submit urine and blood sample reports to prove that Pereira was drunk at the time of the accident.

Pereira and five others were returning from a party at a five-star hotel in the wee hours in November 2006 and were allegedly drunk when they mowed down seven labourers sleeping on a pavement on Carter Road in suburban Bandra. Of the victims, two were children and one a pregnant women.

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