I saw Nanda, BMW witness tells court

NEW DELHI: The BMW case took a dramatic turn on Thursday when Mumbaikar Sunil Kulkarni, a key witness in the hit-and-run, identified in a city court the main accused Sanjeev Nanda, grandson of former naval chief S M Nanda, as one of the occupants of the killer "black car" that mowed down six persons in Golf Links area in January 1999.
Although Kulkarni's three-hour deposition before additional sessions judge Vinod Kumar does not establish that Sanjeev was at the wheels, it does help the prosecution to disprove that it was indeed a car, not a truck — as maintained by the defence — that had run over the hapless six.
The witness, however, diluted his earlier statement before the metropolitan magistrate by denying that he heard the occupants of the car take the name "Sanjeev" at the spot. He blamed the police for mounting pressure on him to testify on this and said he had instead heard "Sanj" or "Sans".
Kulkarni also introduced an element of doubt about his own testimony by repeatedly claiming that he was 60 feet away from the spot where the car hit the victims and that he was partly blinded by the high-beams of vehicles coming in his direction.
"There was a screeching sound of a sudden application of brake by a vehicle followed by another loud sound which appeared to be caused by the hitting of victims by a car... a black car hit some people in the middle of the road... the victims were flung in the air by the impact and they fell in different directions," he recalled about the incident in the wee hours on January 10, 1999.