Mumbai: The 23-year-old accused in the Worli Jogger’s death case, Sumer Dharmesh Merchant, has applied for bail at the metropolitan magistrate court in Dadar. The plea is likely to be heard on Monday. Meanwhile, the test results of Merchant's blood samples suggest that he was under the influence of alcohol when the fatal mishap took place on March 19. However, police sources suggested that when he was taken into custody after the accident, he was perfectly in his senses.
In his police statements, Merchant has repeatedly said that he was sleep deprived and jet-lagged after returning from the US, where he had gone for work purposes and had returned three days before the accident. Moreover, the night before the mishap, he claimed to have partied with his friends all night at his residence in Tardeo; skipping sleep once again.
"When we took him for a medical check-up at Nair Hospital (on the same day of the accident), he was checked with a breathalyzer to see signs of alcohol consumption. However, the result was negative. He was perfectly normal, had a command over his speech, no sign of intoxication. It might be that he drank several hours before the accident and it didn't show up in the breathalyzer test,” a source at the Worli police station told this newspaper.
However, later his blood and urine samples were sent to the JJ Hospital for chemical analysis and the blood report came on Saturday night.
The report suggested that Merchant’s blood had higher alcohol content than the prescribed limit of 30 mg per 100 ml of blood. Following the report, the police included the Motor Vehicles Act section 185 (driving the vehicle by a drunken person if in his/her blood, alcohol exceeding 30 mg per 100 ml of blood).
Accused insists he was jet-lagged
“He may not be under the influence of intoxication of liquor at the time of the accident but his body still had alcohol content left that he must have consumed earlier. The point makes the case stronger against the accused,” added the source, further mentioning that Merchant is insisting that the accident took place as he was sleep deprived and jet-lagged to weaken the case.
The 58-year-old Rajakshmi Vijay Ramakrishnan was allegedly mowed down by Merchant on Sunday morning when the former was jogging on the Worli sea-face promenade
