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b) Mr. Niranjan Mundargi, the learned Counsel appearing for the Applicant in BA/3809/2024 submitted that, between 02/05/2024 to 20/05/2024, said Applicant Dr. Taware was on long leave and he was not physically present in the Sassoon Hospital. There is material inconsistency in the statement of the witnesses. The Applicant has not participated in any of the acts of creating false documents, forgery and swapping of the blood samples for the bribe money, alleged committed in the hospital. There is no allegation of either demanding or accepting the bribe. In the absence of relevant transcriptions, the CDRs on record cannot be used to presume that the this Applicant's telephonic conversation was related to causing disappearance of the evidence on accepting the bribe. As such, the offences punishable under Sections 466, 467, 468 and 471 IPC and the offences of PC Act have no application against the Applicant. In the wake of above and considering the material on record, at the most, offences of Sections 201 IPC may be attracted against this Applicant, which is bailable. Therefore, the Applicant may be released on bail with conditions.

d) Mr. Gupte, the leaned Senior Counsel appearing for the Applicants in BA/3751/2024 submitted that these Applicants are not even implicitly connected with the offence of criminal conspiracy for making false documents, forgery and causing disappearance of the evidence against the bribe amount and for that end, they handled the bribe amount. There is no recovery of any incriminating evidence from them. As such, the offences of the criminal conspiracy, forgery of the valuable security and PC Act have no application against these Applicants.

22. As noted above, there is a prima facie case against the Applicants of hatching a criminal conspiracy to tamper with and cause disappearance of the evidence with the help of false documents/forgery of valuable security. This act is punishable under Section 467 IPC for which the maximum punishment provided is 'imprisonment for life'. No doubt, this offence is non- cognizable, but non-bailable including certain associated offences.

23. Needless to state that it is only the evidence in the case which helps a Court of law to do justice to the parties in the case. The object of police investigation in a crime is to collect evidence on behalf of and in the trust for the State, with an avowed object of producing it before Court of law to get justice to the victim of crime. Yet, in the case in hand, the Applicants jointly tried eroding that very way of the justice to be done to the two innocent, who died in the accident at very young age. As such, the offence is serious.