Indian fugitive hit-run driver Puneet Puneet's return to Australia delayed by court

“You brought him a day ahead. Come tomorrow,” magistrate Sheetal Chaudhary told Punjab police who brought him before the bench on Thursday to begin his extradition hearing.

Puneet will be back in court on Friday morning, Puneet’s counsel Meena Sharma confirmed to Fairfax.

Police in Australia spent four years chasing leads on Puneet, and offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to his arrest, but, now that he is caught, the process to have the 24-year-old extradited to Australia is expected to take weeks, months, or possibly years if he chooses to contest.

Puneet and his family, after initially saying they would accede to demands for his return to Australia, now say they will fight any effort to remove him from India.

“My life is under threat there so I want my trial to continue in India only,” Puneet said.

In October 2008, then 19-year-old Puneet was driving at 150kmh with a blood alcohol reading of 0.165 when he lost control of his car and hit Gold Coast students Dean Hofstee and Clancy Coker on City Road in Southbank in Melbourne.

Mr. Hofstee was killed and Mr. Coker seriously injured.

Puneet initially said a cat had run onto the road distracting him and that he had ‘sore eyes’, but later pleaded guilty to culpable driving in 2009.

However, he fled Australia before he was sentenced on a friend’s borrowed passport before being sentenced, and eluded capture for four years, despite police surveillance of his home city, phone taps of his family and friends, and a massive reward of $100,000, more than five million Indian Rupees.

He was arrested on November 29 this year at a hotel in Panipat, where he and his father were meeting with the family of the woman he planned to marry.

While on the run, Puneet had, apparently, been rebuilding his life.

He had been living in Noida - a sprawling, chaotic, satellite city of Delhi that attracts thousands of young men seeking work and opportunity every week, and so a perfect place for a young north Indian to hide - while working in a call centre.

But he had also made contact with friends and, it is believed, extended family back in his home state of Haryana.

Fairfax understands a friend, who knew Puneet’s movements, gave him up to police, and intends to claim the reward.

On Thursday, four policemen from Punjab brought Puneet to Delhi’s Patiala Court Complex by road.

The magistrate who was supposed to see him was on holiday, so he sat in court for more than an hour, talking with his family, while his case was transferred.

Puneet, who wore a black winter cap and kept his face covered with a white handkerchief, was handcuffed to one policeman. Another officer held his other hand.

“I want the trial to take place here, as I have a threat to my life in Australia,” Puneet told Fairfax outside court on Friday as police took him to Delhi’s Tihar jail.

“I made a mistake. That was an accident. I’m not a criminal or a wanted person. I am just trapped in this situation.”

Puneet’s mother said she was sorry for the family of Dean Hofstee, and for the accident her son caused.

“We have sympathy with the Australian family which has lost their son. We are losing our son too,” she said. “We will appeal to them. To now, we have had no contact with them.”

Puneet will be held in Delhi’s Tihar jail until December 18 when his case will come back before court.

“In the initial days of his arrest he was upset and I have seen him crying loudly when his aunt came to visit him in jail,” a Punjab prison official said.

“Now he is getting used to living with the changing situation.”

Puneet’s mother said “God is with us,” when asked about her son’s case.

Puneet’s father, Naresh Rewal, who last week told Fairfax at his home in Panchkula that his family would not contest the extradition, said yesterday in court the order would be fought.

“We will try all possible means to save him,” he said.

“It will be hard to fight the case in Australia. So we are going to try hard here.”

In interviews Puneet has said he was sorry for the accident with killed Mr Hofstee, describing it as a “bad time, bad place, bad night”.

He said he would not be safe in an Australian prison, and fled the country because he feared for his life.

“I have been attacked two to three times there after the incident, but I was not given any protection … I was scared.”