A doctor has pleaded guilty to careless driving causing his six-year-old daughter’s death in 2024.<\/p>\n
Babak Meshkat, aged 46, of An Cim\u00edn M\u00f3r, Cappagh Road, Galway, was charged following a garda investigation into a crash on the M6, at Rochfortbridge, in Co Westmeath, on 8 February 2024.<\/p>\n
Hana Mehkat died at Children’s Health Ireland at Temple Street in Dublin, nine days later.<\/p>\n
Last year, Meshkat was charged and sent forward for trial to Mullingar Circuit Criminal Court.<\/p>\n
The case resumed this morning when Judge Cephas Power noted from the prosecution that there was an application to amend the original charge of dangerous driving causing death to a lesser charge of careless driving causing Hana’s death.<\/p>\n
Defence counsel Gerard Groarke confirmed that the case could be progressed, and once the indictment was redrafted, Meshkat was arraigned.<\/p>\n
Meshkat replied “guilty” when the reworded charge was put to him, and he was not required to give evidence at this stage.<\/p>\n
Judge Power remanded him on continuing bail to appear again for sentencing on 22 July.<\/p>\n
He noted the defence needed to obtain reports and also directed the preparation of a victim impact statement.<\/p>\n
Earlier, the defence indicated it would engage an independent expert to analyse the crash data from the 2021-registered car, and further disclosure of evidence was ordered.<\/p>\n
Meshkat’s barrister had asked for additional time, explaining that time was needed to examine technical documents and instruct a forensic engineer.<\/p>\n
The court heard the defence wished to have access to and an inspection of the car’s driver data from a crash module installed in the vehicle.<\/p>\n
The State had already provided a 120-page report from the garda inspection to Meshkat’s legal team.<\/p>\n
An investigation file was sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions, leading to criminal proceedings being initiated last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A doctor has pleaded guilty to careless driving causing his six-year-old daughter’s death in 2024. Babak Meshkat, aged…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":525867,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-525866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525866\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/525867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}