A week ago, the Frisco Police Department was convinced that it had a solid case against Pallavi Dhawan in the mysterious death of her 10-year-old son, Arnav, and was ready to tell everyone about it.
"Officers asked if she had killed the child and Mrs. Dhawan nodded her head 'yes,'" Frisco PD spokesman Sergeant Brad Merritt had said at a news conference last week. But since then, Pallavi Dhawan's husband, Sumeet, and family attorney David Finn have come out with a far more complicated picture.
With an alternative narrative that police may have misinterpreted Pallavi Dhawan's gesture and also weren't aware of the boy's poor medical history, the attorney and the husband accuse Frisco police of bungling the case. So what do Frisco cops have to say about all that? Nothing. They've decided to just stop talking about the case entirely.
Family attorney David Finn says that Arnav's medical records were confiscated by the police. He wants them back but claims that the department is refusing to hand them over.
He says he's also unsuccessfully asked for the search warrant affidavit.
"They've just been difficult," Finn told Unfair Park last night outside the family home. Finn had gathered with Sumeet and Pallavi, who is out on bond, and dozens of others for a somber candlelight vigil.
In an interview afterward, Finn described Pallavi's confession as a piece of fiction. "They never asked if her she killed him," he insists.
The supposed confession that the Frisco police described happened not in the course of a formal interrogation but during the initial visit police made to the family home, as described by the department's spokesman in last week's news conference.
Finn blames sloppy police work for that conference.
"They realized they jumped the gun," he says.
Reached by telephone, Frisco police spokesman Merritt now says the department isn't discussing the case. He won't confirm if it's true that the department has failed to hand over the medical records or the affidavit. "We're not making any comments in reference to that case right now," Merritt said. "That's about the best I can tell you."
