Mumbai: “Mumma, where is Papa?,” seven-year-old Preesha often asks her mother. For Preesha, her father, Shailesh Mishra, is a figure stitched together from photographs and videos. She was just seven months old when Shailesh, a financial advisor, was killed in a road crash caused by an allegedly drunk driver. Today, seven years after the tragedy, the trial against the accused is yet to begin. Left to raise their daughter alone, Shailesh’s wife, Preeti, finds herself caught in the grinding gears of the legal system.An MBA grad, Shailesh was pursuing a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) certification which he juggled along side work. “Shailesh was working very hard for our family’s future,” said Preeti. But their dreams were shattered early on June 16, 2019. Shailesh was travelling from Kandivli to Andheri in an app-based cab when a speeding car steered by an allegedly drunk driver rammed into the cab from behind at Goregaon East, according to the FIR registered by Aarey Police. Seated in the backseat, Shailesh started bleeding from his nose and mouth. He was rushed to Trauma Care Hospital, where he was pronounced dead by the doctors.Police arrested the driver of the speeding vehicle, Sudhandhu Saboo, who was 19 at the time, from the crash site. Police said his learning licence had expired. In August 2019, Saboo was granted bail.The period that followed brought a cycle of case adjournments, stretching the family’s grief into an agonizing legal marathon. Preeti recalls carrying her infant daughter to court to attend hearings initially before Covid-19 broke out and slowed down the legal process for a couple of years. In 2024, Saboo filed a discharge application through his legal counsel, Inderpal Singh. The application seeks that Saboo be discharged from the offence entirely; or in the alternative, the charges of ‘culpable homicide not amounting to murder’ under the IPC and ‘drunk driving’ under the Motor Vehicles Act be replaced by the less severe charge of ‘causing death by negligence’ under the IPC.“We have filed a discharge application. The prosecution has filed their say. The matter has been kept for arguments,” Singh told TOI.The legal battle, combined with the pressure of being a sole breadwinner, has severely impacted Preeti’s health. A recent health scare has only intensified her anxiety.Desperate for justice, Preeti has taken her fight to social media to demand that the trial start soon. “I’m not seeking sympathy,” she has said in a heart-wrenching post. “I want my voice to reach the authorities. Does the life of a common citizen not hold any value?”
