Mumbai: A 16-year-old boy was apprehended on Monday after he allegedly sped on a borrowed scooter and nearly hit a lawyer’s bike on SV Road in Andheri. DN Nagar police lodged an FIR against his father because the teen claimed he had given him the scooter, but the lawyer said the action was initiated only six hours later and that too after multiple interventions.The lawyer, Hasan Mirchandani, who practises in Bombay high court, alleged that an attempt was made to file a cross-FIR against him on the false charge that he had slapped the boy after catching up with him. He said the teen had been nabbed in front of a police patrol team and he hadn’t laid a hand on him. He said even if the charge of slapping were true, police could have only filed a non-cognisable offence, and not an FIR. Rajendra Machinder, senior inspector, DN Nagar police, did not respond to TOI’s calls. Charges of rash driving under BNS as well as for allowing an unauthorised person to drive a vehicle and offence by a juvenile under Motor Vehicles Act were invoked against the father, Wasim Shaikh, an Andheri resident. It’s unclear if action has also been initiated since Monday against his friend, Sahil Shaikh, the scooter’s owner. The boy was let go after the FIR was filed. Mirchandani, who also posted on X on Wednesday about the ordeal he faced at the police station, said around 7.30pm on Monday, he and his wife were returning to their home in Andheri West on their bike when the speeding teen nearly hit him. “I asked him to stop, but he zipped away. A little ahead, I saw him standing by the road and went to question him. A police constable, who was on duty, arrived at the same time. The boy said the scooter belonged to his father’s friend, and that his father had given it to him to ride.” He said with the help of the constable, he took the boy to the police station to file a complaint against his parents for letting him ride the scooter. “My intention was not to harass the minor; I wanted his parents to learn a lesson. But I faced a tough time at the police station.” Mirchandani said he had to wait till 2am to get the FIR lodged. Even that action, he added, came after the interventions of the president of a bar association, Ravi Jadhav, and a former president of another, Pradeep Shetty. “Had I not been a lawyer and able to question police on the attempt to file a cross-FIR, things could have gone very differently.” DCP (zone 9) Dikshit Gedam said he was unaware of the lawyer’s allegations and would have to check the case details. This the second such incident of underage driving in Andheri in less than a month. On March 15, a 17-year-old Dubai resident, who was on a visit to Mumbai, allegedly hit a scooter with a rental SUV in Chandivli, killing a 15-year-old boy on the pillion. Chandivli had seen a similar case in 2023 when a 14-year-old boy knocked down a senior citizen with a car, leaving him with severe spinal fractures. On March 24 this year, a 42-year-old businessman cycling on an incomplete stretch of Kalyan’s Ring Road was killed after a speeding car allegedly driven by a 17-year-old boy hit him.
