The BMW hit-and-run case

The BMW incident appears to have unfolded as follows:


The incident occurred at 4:50 AM early morning of January 10, 1999. Sanjeev Nanda was returning from a late night party in Gurgaon with friends Manik Kapoor &Siddharth Gupta. Both were in their early twenties and came from influential business families - Manik's father Sudhir Kapoor runs a thriving export business was one of the closest to the Nanda Family.

Sanjiv had apparently been instructed by his parents not to drive that night, but was at the wheel anyway. There was a police checkpoint on Lodhi Road and it appears that the constable may have challenged the car, though it is also possible that the car was going so fast that it was out of control. In any event, it is alleged that Sanjeev's BMW crashed through all the people at the police checkpoint, immediately killing two constables - Rajan Kumar (25) (of 86th Battalion of the CRPF), Ram Raj (38) of Delhi Home Guard, and two others - Abdul Nasir (30) and Gulab (32), who were apparently being interrogated. Another policeman, Peru Lal (40) of the Delhi Home Guard, along with Mehendi Hassan, died later in hospital. The seventh victim, Manoj (32), survived, but is untraceable today. ^[4]

After running through the policemen, he allegedly stopped the car to check the damage, saw people under the car, and according to the prosecution, at this point co-passenger Manik Kapoor said: ‘‘Let’s go,’’ and they quickly drove away^[2]. The car was then driven to Siddharth Gupta's house in Golf Links, where Siddharth's father Rajiv Gupta, who heads the finance firm Motor General Finance, instructed watchman Bhola Nath and driver Shyam Singh Rana to clean the bumpers and bonnet of the car of the blood and vestiges of the victims. Subsequently the police charged these three with destroying evidence. A few days later, a witness Sunil Kulkarni, came forward to describe the scene. At the time of the crash, he was on his way to the railway station. He deposed as follows on Jan 16, 1999:

"They were driving very fast. The car went to the side, crushing two people. A few others were thrown away. The driver got out and looked at the damage done to the car. Then the other person in the car came out and looked behind the car. Then they quickly drove off. I came to the police on the 15th because of my guilty conscience."