Jun 11, (Mid-day): In her statement to the police, lawyer Janhavi Gadkar, who had rammed her Audi into a taxi on Tuesday, killing two people, has confessed that she was under the influence of alcohol, had driven rashly and on the wrong side
Corporate lawyer Janhavi Gadkar has told the police that she usually drank beer and had tried whisky for fun on the night she killed two people after ramming her Audi into a taxi on the Eastern Freeway.
In her statement, which was recorded on Tuesday morning, several hours after she gained consciousness and was able to talk to the police, Gadkar has confessed that she was driving under the influence of alcohol, that she had driven rashly and had entered the wrong side of the Freeway.
Also read: Drunk advocate on wrong side of freeway rams taxi, kills two Contrary to the police’s claims that she had consumed six pegs and that she and her colleagues had ratcheted up a bill of Rs 6,000, however, Gadkar said that she had two pegs and the bill was Rs 2,000.
Here is what she told the police in her statement:
>> I, Janhavi Ajit Gadkar (35), am a resident of Chembur.
>> In 2002, I completed LLB from the Government Law College in Churchgate. I left for England in 2004 and completed my LLM.
>> I worked with Talwar Thakur Associates as a lawyer for seven years. Thereafter, I joined Reliance Region Chamber as Vice-President Legal in 2013. Soon after joining Reliance, I bought an Audi Q3 and have been commuting from my house in Chembur to the office in Nariman Point in my car.
>> On June 8, I attended my office and my colleagues, Rahul Dutt and Shailendra Rane, and I went to celebrate in the evening as we had bagged a new project. At 7 pm we went to Marine Plaza. Instead of beer, for fun, I decided to have whisky that day. I had two pegs of Ballantine’s Whisky and had dinner after that. Our total bill was around R2,000. I paid the bill.
>> Around 10 pm, we left the hotel. Then, I was in my car, alone, at Marine Drive for two hours. At midnight, I left my friends and drove away in my car. I took a U-turn from Marine Drive towards Churchgate station and then went to P D’Mello Road to take the Eastern Freeway.
>> Since I was under the influence of whisky, I drove on the wrong side and also drove rashly. Around 1 pm, when I reached close to the Shivaji Nagar mosque on the Freeway, I rammed my Audi into a taxi coming from the opposite direction.
>> I got saved because of the air bags, but fell unconscious. When I gained consciousness and some of the bystanders pulled me out of the car,
>> I saw that the taxi into which I had rammed my vehicle was parked in the middle of the road and had suffered severe damage. After that, the police made me sit in one of their vehicles and took me to the hospital for a medical test.
