When walking to the bus stop this morning, I saw the front page of the Herald Sun – a shrink wrapped copy lying on the driveway of a house somewhere around the corner.
‘Bring Him Back!’ was the headline.
Having grown up reading The Sun News Pictorial in the morning and The Herald in the evening (prior to their sad merger into the one entity in 1990), I knew exactly whom the headline writer was referring to: Puneet Puneet.
Puneet Puneet (what a name!), as everyone knows, is Melbourne’s answer to Great Train Robber Ronald Biggs. Except that Biggsy seems to have had a lot more panache and verve in his career as a fugitive from justice.
As a recap, Puneet Puneet was a 19 year old learner driver who had an unfortunate accident in Southbank in 2009 where he killed someone. It did not help that he was drink driving and speeding either. He pleaded guilty to the subsequent charges early on and was released on bail pending sentencing. He then ‘borrowed’ the passport of a friend and fled Australia.
Since then, attempts to have him extradited back to Australia have proven ultimately fruitless. He was arrested at his wedding in 2012 (one of his friends could not resist the reward money to inform on his whereabouts), and has been in and out of custody since then. The Herald Sun today observed that he has had 147 court appearances so far whilst fighting his extradition.
The sole ‘current’ road block to his extradition comprises domestic violence charges laid in 2022. Apparently extradition cannot occur until those charges are dealt with – which can take 4 to 6 years.
The article in today’s Herald Sun was another plea from Puneet Puneet’s victim’s father for the Federal Government to do something to expedite the extradition. I can sympathise with his desire for the delays in his son’s killer facing justice, but I also have long since formed the view (as in an earlier post on this case https://lostforwords.blog/2020/04/24/the-strange-and-highly-dickensian-case-of-puneet-puneet/) that the Indian legal system is sufficiently Dickensian as to make the Courts of Chancery in Dickens’ tedious novel Bleak House seem efficient.
So far, to the frustration of involved parties, the legal team behind Puneet Puneet have tried all sorts of absurd but highly effective tactics to delay extradition. At one point, a new judge was appointed to the case and wanted both sides to repeat their verbal arguments – making me wonder about the probity of the new judge’s motives.
Now there is the domestic violence accusation. I do not know what to believe. But I do not envy Mrs Puneet. I expect that her parents arranged her marriage to this highly successful chap because of his family’s relative wealth. To have her groom torn from her during their wedding celebration would have been humiliating (but possibly also a blessing). Since then, he at one point disappeared whilst on bail with his mistress (a woman who probably does not have her parents to blame for her connection to such a fine and honourable gentleman).
Does the domestic violence accusation have merit? I could easily expect someone with the demonstrated character of Puneet Puneet in the fifteen intervening years since he fled Australia to commit domestic violence. But it is very possible that this is just a cynical ploy by his legal team to buy even more time, and that Mrs Puneet has been bullied by the family and the legal sharks into making these allegations mainly to help him evade justice in Australia.
After all, the societal and cultural attitudes demonstrated in many parts of India towards women are not exactly convincing that domestic violence is abhorred and prosecuted. Don’t take my word for it – look at section 6 of the US State Department Report on Human Rights Practices for India:
https://www.state.gov/reports/2023-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/india/
I am very cynical about the likelihood of Puneet Puneet returning to Melbourne anytime this decade (if at all) to face justice. The only consolation to the family of his grieving victim is that the Puneet family has probably spent a large part of their family fortune on keeping him away from justice, and that he has, at least, spent considerable time in remand at various intervals over the past 12 years.
But what will happen if he does return? Will he be allowed to recant his original guilt plea and demand a trial? Will his legal team argue that the publicity and opprobrium he has incurred since his flight means that he cannot get a fair trial?
I do not expect any of this to end very soon.
Lost For Words! 