Maharashtra: Bureaucrat's family defends son, rejects charge of running over girlfriend
His family contended that Ashwajit was attending a family gathering along with his wife and kids in Thane on the day of the incident
Facing accusation of mowing down his 26-year-old girlfriend Priya Singh in Maharashtra’s Thane, Ashwajit Gaikwad, son of a senior bureaucrat, has found support from his family which has issued a statement, refuting all allegations made by the woman, including murder attempt claims.
His family contended that Ashwajit was attending a family gathering along with his wife and kids in Thane on the day of the incident. “It wasn’t at 4 am but at 1.30 am or 2 am, this girl had started texting Aswhajit wanting to meet him. She also reached the Courtyard Hotel and barged into the party. Yes, she did barge in where Ashwajit was with his friends and family,” the family said. They further claimed that the woman was “intoxicated”, adding that “just because Ashwajit did not respond to her calls and texts at midnight, this girl started abusing and hitting him and his friends.”
“Might be there was a past between the two, but Ashwajit maintains he and she were just friends. Now Ashwajit also claims that he has paid her money on several occasions; even if he was in a relationship with her then, they must have broken up in the recent past,” the statement read.
Foul play alleged
On the sequence of events in question, the statement read, “When she (Priya Singh) started hitting him and his friends, Ashwajit and his family fled the spot in his car with his family, totally embarrassed! She then clung to his driver’s car and the driver too wanted to leave as his boss had already left. But then as soon as the driver sped, she fell off and in the process, she hurt herself badly as it was a moving car which she clung on to.”
They said that the driver saw that the woman had fallen down and immediately rushed her to a nearby hospital and completed all the formalities.
The family claimed that they intimated Priya’s sister about the incident and handed her all her valuables. However, she soon changed her hospital and a local rival also joined her, thinking it was the best chance to get back to the Gaikwads, alleged the family. They further said that the CCTV footage, accessed by the police, showed that Ashwajit was “nowhere in the frame when the girl fell from the car and injured herself”.
Ashwajit’s family said that the account of the incident put out by the woman on her Instagram story and what has been mentioned in the FIR are completely different. “In one she blames Ashwajit and in the other, it is said the driver dashed her,” they said.
Meanwhile, Priya Singh claimed that she didn’t know that Ashwajit was married. “When I came to know (that he was married), he told me that they (his wife and him) were not together anymore, they had separated. He said that he wanted to marry me. I was staying with him for a long time,” she was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.
