NEW DELHI // A lawyer for an Indian driver who fled Australia after a fatal car accident said yesterday that his client would not get a fair trial if extradited because of hatred towards Indian students.
Anil Mittal, lawyer for Puneet Puneet, told a New Delhi court he opposed his client’s extradition to Melbourne to face trial because of the “hatred towards Indian students in Australia”.
Several attacks on Indian students in Australia in 2011 outraged India and led to accusations of racism against migrants, sparking a diplomatic row between the two countries.
Mr Mittal also accused Australian police of pressuring Mr Puneet into confessing to the crime but did not give details.
“The guilty plea was taken out of him under pressure,” the lawyer told the magistrate’s court. “We are opposing his extradition”.
Mr Puneet, 24, who is being held in Delhi’s Tihar jail, was in court along with members of his family.
Mr Puneet, who only had a provisional driver’s licence at the time of the crash, hit two students aged 19 and 20 as they walked across a road in Melbourne in 2008. One of them died at the scene.
Australian police estimated Mr Puneet was driving at 148 kilometres an hour and also tested positive for alcohol.
Mr Puneet was charged with culpable driving and negligently causing serious injury, then bailed on strict conditions including the surrender of his passport. But he later fled using a fellow Indian’s passport.
After four years on the run from police in India, he was arrested in late November.
Prosecutors said the Indian government had already agreed to extradition and the Australian court fixed January 9 as the date for the next hearing.
Agence France-Presse
