A judicial magistrate court in Durgapur on Sunday rejected the bail petition of Bablu Yadav, the owner of the SUV that allegedly chased the car of 26-year-old event manager Sutandra Chatterjee leading to a crash that killed her last Monday.

Bablu was sent to judicial custody for four days.

Brought to court on Sunday from a two-day police remand, Bablu was charged with culpable homicide not amounting to murder, which was the only non-bailable section in the case, while other sections included reckless driving.

Bablu’s lawyer Sajal Saha said they told the court that culpable homicide not amounting to murder charges did not stand against his client. The CCTV footage released by the police of the incident just before Sutandra’s car hit a public toilet and turned turtle in which she was killed showed that her car was chasing Bablu’s SUV, he pointed out. “If the vehicle of my client was ahead of the woman’s car, how did he chase her, leading to the fatal mishap? What was the motive? Secondly, the driver of the deceased’s car was responsible for the mishap as he was driving the car. Why was he not arrested?” asked Saha.

The police on Sunday again sought four days of remand for Bablu’s further interrogation. The court rejected it and sent him to judicial custody for four days.

Bablu, who is a car scrap dealer at Panagarh in Kanksa, West Burdwan, fled to Uttar Pradesh after the incident and was arrested on Thursday from Andal after his lawyer advised him to return and surrender. Police arrested him from Andal before
he surrendered.

Sutandra, a resident of Chandernagore, was on her way to Gaya in Bihar for work in the small hours of last Monday, when she died after her speeding blue Tiago hit a public toilet and a shop and turned turtle in the wake of an alleged chase by Bablu’s white Creta in Panagarh.

According to the complaint lodged by Mintu Mondal, one of the occupants in Sutandra’s car, Bablu, who was at the wheel of the SUV, and some others with him had been chasing their car since they took NH19 after refueling their vehicle at a petrol pump at Pursha East Burdwan’s Galsi, 33km away from Panagarh.