Mumbai corporate lawyer arrested for culp homicide after allegedly drink driving her Audi into taxi, killing 2

NDTV reported that vice president (legal) of Reliance Industries and former Talwar Thakore Associates managing associate Janhavi Gadkar had allegedly killed two persons in a taxi while driving her Audi Q3 drunk in Mumbai last night on the wrong side of a major freeway.

The 35 year old lawyer has been arrested by police, after killing Mohd Salim Saboowala, 50, and the taxi’s driver Mohd Hussain Sayaed, 57. Three passengers survived the crash which mangled the taxi and caused heavy damage to the Audi.

She has been booked with culpable homicide not amounting to murder and rash driving, said the police, relying on video evidence shot minutes before the crash.

She had worked at TTA between 2007 and 2013, according to her Linked in profile.

Comments

Vent 9 Jun 2015, 15:50
+0 -4
Kian, she should be termed as 'Former Corporate Lawyer'! She's an employee of a company now.
kianganz 10 Jun 2015, 07:00
+16 -0
That makes her fit squarely within the definition of 'corporate lawyer'.
maser 11 Jun 2015, 05:55
+0 -1
if she doesn't have a Sanad, how can she be termed a 'lawyer'?
Once you are in the employed in a Company you have to give up ur sanad/bar licence.
Seema Sapra 11 Jun 2015, 06:58
+3 -1
She'd still be a legal counsel/ lawyer but not an "advocate", which is the term used in the Advocates Act.
Or she could still be on the Bar Council rolls and only have a retainer-ship contract with Reliance.
maser noobie 11 Jun 2015, 08:00
+0 -0
cant be called an "advocate".
DBS 9 Jun 2015, 15:53
+4 -2
Vice President (Legal) at the age of 35. Not bad!!
audi 9 Jun 2015, 15:54
+5 -2
when she is no longer a practicing lawyer, how can she have a 'Bombay High Court Advocate' sticker prominently displayed on her Audi??!!!
kianganz 10 Jun 2015, 07:01
+1 -0
Don't know whether she had that sticker, but always been wondering that - is there actually any legal sanction to 'falsely' using one of those stickers on your car? What about using a 'press' sticker?
DBS 10 Jun 2015, 11:13
+1 -0
can be booked for 'impersonation' !
Anonymous 10 Jun 2015, 09:38
+0 -0
[quote name="audi"]when she is no longer a practicing lawyer, how can she have a 'Bombay High Court Advocate' sticker prominently displayed on her Audi??!!![/quote]

May be she was on a retainer with the company. May be she was appearing as Advocate for the company before the High Court.
maybe 10 Jun 2015, 11:14
+0 -0
too many maybe's. too much doubt.
Alas 9 Jun 2015, 16:47
+8 -2
This shows no matter how successful you are, the almighty can snatch away your success from you in an instant
Guest 10 Jun 2015, 05:38
+1 -0
Well that's one rather roundabout way of looking at it.
Probably more that 'successful' is really narrowly understood and such 'successful' ppl are equally prone to doing stupid things.
Guest 9 Jun 2015, 17:31
+9 -0
Absolutely shocking. Hard to believe that a successful educated lawyer would take such risks.
TTA 10 Jun 2015, 06:16
+3 -6
Probably, because services such as Uber are far from safe?
[quote name="Guest"]Absolutely shocking. Hard to believe that a successful educated lawyer would take such risks.[/quote]
Dante 10 Jun 2015, 03:53
+1 -0
Kian! please fix the typos! after killing for killing Mohd Salim Saboowal!
kianganz 10 Jun 2015, 07:02
+0 -0
Is the spelling not correct? Took spelling from NDTV report...
Wild Child No.1 11 Jun 2015, 15:18
+2 -0
@Kian - "after killing for killing" is the problem.

@Dante - Please stop speaking to the world like you speak to your juniors. Next you'll be jumping around over a semi-colon.
kianganz 11 Jun 2015, 15:20
+0 -0
Ah, thanks - correcting!
Qute 10 Jun 2015, 05:07
+9 -2
Audi-cious!
Guest 10 Jun 2015, 08:16
+1 -0
Which law school is she from? Does anybody know?
ThePhantom 12 Jun 2015, 05:39
+0 -0
[quote name="Guest"]Which law school is she from? Does anybody know?[/quote]

Sorry my comment should have been here. She was from GLC Bombay - 2002 batch.
Guest 10 Jun 2015, 08:18
+0 -0
A student of St. Colubmia Girls High School in Gamdevi, Janhavi, 32, graduated from University of Warwick in England 2004 in international economic law. She worked with law firms like Wadia Ghandy & Co, and was a managing associate at Talwar Thakore and Associates before joining Reliance. At Talwar Thakore, Janhavi assisted Suresh Talwar and Feroz Dubash on the HSBC's takeover of RBS in 2010.
ThePhantom 12 Jun 2015, 05:37
+0 -0
[quote name="Guest"]A student of St. Colubmia Girls High School in Gamdevi, Janhavi, 32, graduated from University of Warwick in England 2004 in international economic law. She worked with law firms like Wadia Ghandy & Co, and was a managing associate at Talwar Thakore and Associates before joining Reliance. At Talwar Thakore, Janhavi assisted Suresh Talwar and Feroz Dubash on the HSBC's takeover of RBS in 2010.[/quote]

GLC Mumbai - 2002 batch
kianganz 10 Jun 2015, 08:58
+0 -0
Mumbai Mirror has more details:
http://www.mumbaimirror.com/mumbai/others/Janhavi-is-a-good-hardworking-and-helpful-kid-say-former-colleagues/articleshow/47606960.cms
Plato 10 Jun 2015, 10:04
+6 -7
Take heed. This is what happens when you ban companies like Uber/ Ola in Delhi who were actutally doing yeoman's service trying to get party animals safely back home.

Wait and watch, some poor soul in Delhi will get his / her livelihood snatched away because we cannot accept change, technological progress, honest businesses and convinience in society.

We are doomed to be ruled by crooked people and people under influence of such crooked people; like in Delhi. Because, hey, if public is convinienced, who will line the pockets of the uneducated government minsters and their servants ?
Aristotle 10 Jun 2015, 14:54
+6 -4
So you're going to condone drunk driving because of a lack of Uber?

What about all the licensed cab operators out there who took the time to actually comply with the law?!?!?

Lets allow anyone to run a cab company without any verification process because, hey!, otherwise we have drunk drivers!

Really!!! That's about as idiotic as I've seen on LI today, and that's quite a high standard

And before you say you're not condoning, merely saying this is inevitable blah blah, lets take your comment apart bit by bit.

"This is what happens when you ban companies like Uber/ Ola in Delhi who were actutally doing yeoman's service trying to get party animals safely back home."

Actually, this happened even when Uber and Ola were operating, and will continue to happen after as well. Uber/Ola weren't doing Yeoman's service, they were providing a service for which they were being paid, and they were doing this illegally.

"Wait and watch, some poor soul in Delhi will get his / her livelihood snatched away because we cannot accept change, technological progress, honest businesses and convinience in society."

Actually, Uber as a company, across the world, has been stealing people's livelihoods through using unfair means of competition--read up a bit. Ola just cost a whole lot of people their credit card details as well. Change and New technology is good, low quality service that is only cheaper because it doesn't have regulatory compliance costs is not. And anyone who calls Uber an honest business is either paid for or completely naive

"We are doomed to be ruled by crooked people and people under influence of such crooked people; like in Delhi. Because, hey, if public is convinienced, who will line the pockets of the uneducated government minsters and their servants ?"

Randomm two sentences that are meaningless in the context of the article. Also, the semi-colon is wrongly placed. But hey, who cares about meaning, context, or relevant, right?
Plato 11 Jun 2015, 10:03
+1 -0
Aristotle,

Noone is condoning drunk driving, the comment refers to the fact that if there was a means of transport which people trust enough when they go out at night, then they would not get behind the wheel of their own car but rather avail it. So, before jumping in to defend transport unions and mafia run autos, one needs to understand the essence of conversation.

Also, since you would prefer to take things line by line, let's do this again:

What about all the licensed cab operators out there who took the time to actually comply with the law?!?!?

The so called licensed cab operators have merely applied for / have been granted a permit and got themselves affiliated to the RTOA in Delhi. None of them claim to have an authentic hundred percent verification system in place for all their drivers and all their cars. In fact, there are quite a few cases of the permit being issued to one driver and another driver driving the car without any identification whatsoever. Add to that, the tardiness, the general cleanliness of the cars, and the attitude of the drivers and the answer is clear which company would be a first choice for the willing customer. Further, there have been criminal acts in these vehicles also, but surprisingly the entire fleet has been never banned.

Also, it is very surprising that only the Delhi government seems to have a problem with these operators wheras elsewhere operations are running smoothly.

Lets allow anyone to run a cab company without any verification process because, hey!, otherwise we have drunk drivers!

Uber generally represents itself as an information technology company which uses an app to facilitate interaction and provision of a service between the car owner (known as a driver partner) and the passenger. It does not represent itself as a cab company. Further, the operations of Uber and Ola have even been recognized in the state of West Bengal as an information technology company and not a cab operator. In reference to "we are drunk drivers", refer portion of comment relating to trust above.

However, the verification process of driver partners needs to be completed within the full extent of the law and this is the only sentence in your long tirade I can agree with.

Actually, this happened even when Uber and Ola were operating, and will continue to happen after as well. Uber/Ola weren't doing Yeoman's service, they were providing a service for which they were being paid, and they were doing this illegally.

The day after the supposed ban came into place in Delhi, a simple scan of sample FB profiles/ twitter handles would reveal the extent of despair within young people who had found one simple, reasonable solution to commute to and fro, at late hours. The simple point is nobody in Delhi trusts the autos at night and there is even less trust for these so called "registered cabs" who sit on street corners and even try to commute people without going through the system. The legality and illegality of the operation is confined to the verification process which is not 100 % complete even in RTOA registered cabs and if one state in India can recognize a company as an "information technology company" they are well within their rights to assume the same in other states given their business model.

Further, both companies,as we speak, have also applied for permits which are being delayed. Also, please note that both companies presently do not take commission from their drivers, but operate on the "Poocho" model app adopted from the DIMTS for hailing autos in the NCT, which is a government operation. Hence, the delay in issuing permits is quite confounding.

Hence, the question is the application of a better, cheap, reasonable service which had proved itself within a short time vis-a-vis carriages which can't even turn up in neat and clean and undamaged cars, forget providing a reasonably safe service.

Change and New technology is good, low quality service that is only cheaper because it doesn't have regulatory compliance costs is not. And anyone who calls Uber an honest business is either paid for or completely naive

If you are from Delhi, then the phrase "low quality service" applied to Uber /Ola compared to normal radio cabs, autos, transporter cabs really does not apply. The people who use the service are testimony to that. See above.

Also, the semi-colon is wrongly placed.

A semi-colon (;) is a punctuation mark that separates major sentence elements. A semicolon can be used between two closely related independent clauses, provided they are not already joined by a coordinating conjunction (See Genrally, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semicolon, last accessed 11 June 2015)

Have given a link from wikipedia because figured any other slightly technical source may go above your head.

In the sentence, "We are doomed to be ruled by crooked people and people under influence of such crooked people; like in Delhi..."; there are two distinct sentence elements. The first one talks about a prediction when subject to the rule of "crooked" people, the second refers to the place of such rule i.e. "Delhi".

Since, there is no coordinating conjuction like and/or/but, the semi colon is correctly used to separate the two major sentence elements.

Finally, wading in to defend shoddy services with little professionalism seems to be a little immature. Perhaps a little reading and knowledge of grammar / syntax would do wonders.

Small disclaimer : I am not affiliated with Uber/Ola in any way. I have used the services of all the leading companies and in process have had detailed conversations with drivers etc driving for all of them. Hence, a contextual arguement was advanced.
Seema Sapra 11 Jun 2015, 10:44
+3 -0
The whole incident is really unfortunate, no one deliberately decides to drive drunk and kill someone, and its sad that this lady will suffer the serious consequences of her actions.

But given that she is Vice President Legal at Reliance and drove an Audi, she could have afforded a driver or asked the hotel to get her a cab, hotel cabs even if more expensive are always safe. Her Audi would have been safe at the hotel overnight. She was not really dependent upon Uber etc.

So this whole Uber spiel on this thread sounds irrelevant to me.

The friend she was with at the hotel should also have gotten her into a cab given the amount of whiskey she had allegedly consumed according to news reports. Not blaming anyone, but a lesson for all of us.
Wild Child No.1 11 Jun 2015, 15:27
+7 -0
Except, except, this happened in Mumbai where Uber, Ola, Meru, Tabcab and what-have-you abound. Don't get the connection you're trying to make.
Slipping 10 Jun 2015, 15:10
+1 -1
Kian, I'm surprised your headline doesn't highlight the CAM connection :-p
Dazed and Confused 11 Jun 2015, 05:30
+4 -0
Let's see if her sentence is comparable to this. Driving 10km the wrong way, knocking into cars...evidence of a depraved heart. Lets see if her money bags protect her as well as the Audi air bags that saved her.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3068027/Woman-22-tweeted-2-drunk-care-killing-two-best-friends-wrong-way-crash-sentenced-24-years-prison.html
yamraj 12 Jun 2015, 05:52
+2 -0
so here is a different perspective - the biggest problem with trying to blame drunk people or rather decisions made by drunk people, is that they are drunk. They are (mostly) incapable to judging a stupid decision from a wise one. It is ofcorse stupid to get that drunk in the first place but once there, you cant rely on the inebriated person to decide wisely. Wait for it please, I have a point. So the question is, who do you blame or better still, how do you prevent such accidents from happening again? You can either rely on the drunk person to be wise (which is unlikely in most cases) or prevent the person from getting piss drunk in the first place. A lot of countries hold the bar / restaurant liable for serving customers beyond a few drinks. If they do serve on, they should be required to check whether the person is driving back as self / taking a cab/ has a driver etc. If in self, they should stop serving. Strictly stop serving. I know there is a possibility of people just lying about how they will go back, but this is till a step in the right direction. The key here is to balance the commercial interest of a bar and the risk of liability if one of their patrons is allowed to get drunk in their bar and cause a road accident. Net - net: it would be a welcome move with a lot of potential to make the roads safer.
Model 12 Jun 2015, 13:01
+2 -0
"Strictly stop serving", huh? In a different setting, Jessica Lal did the same thing a few years ago. We all know how that one went!
role model 13 Jun 2015, 17:24
+0 -0
yeah, that makes perfect sense! keep serving because if you say no, you will get shot! God save us from idiots!!
Corporate Restructuring 12 Jun 2015, 15:46
+4 -0
More Details here :

http://www.mid-day.com/articles/mumbai-drunk-driving-accident-i-had-whisky-for-fun-says-advocate/16281191
Panigrahi 12 Jun 2015, 16:04
+1 -0
Sorry bro...recruitment is informally suspended owing to Corporate Restructuring :O