He said he was sleeping in the car and had no clue who drove when the foursome was returning from a party in a Delhi hotel. Tapan was arrested late Saturday night and was produced in court on Sunday. He was released on bail.

Karan (16), Siddarth (15) and Divyanshu (18) — all students of G D Goenka World School — had died on the spot.

Police had registered FIR against “unknown driver” but, on Sunday, DLF Phase-II Station House Officer (SHO) Ashok Kumar said: “We arrested the boy because as per our investigations he was driving the car. We arrested him for rash, negligent and drunken driving and causing death due to negligence.” He refused to comment on the fact that the case registered at his police station does not name Tapan.

Prodded further, Kumar said, “We are not sure whether all four were drinking —the postmortem reports have not come yet.”

Insisting he was not driving, Tapan’s mother Geeta Malik said: “He had gone on a pilgrimage to Vrindavan and returned on Friday. He was really sleepy when his friends came and asked him to come for the party.”

Sources said Tapan had applied for a driving licence on June 3 but was not carrying it with him on Friday.

Tapan Malik, alleged to be a Class IX dropout from Amity International School, had lost his father and uncle within a matter of weeks a couple of years ago. Both were shot to death, it emerged on Sunday.

While his father Sunil Malik was shot on NH-8, his uncle Manoj Malik, the only witness, was gunned down at Atul Kataria Chowk near Sector 14, Gurgaon, and a couple of months later. Both in 2006. Tapan’s father owned several liquor shops in Gurgaon and senior police officials put the murder due to “some business enmity”.

The same year, Tapan was reportedly thrown out of school due to “unruly behaviour”. He was not able to get admission in any Gurgaon school afterwards, though his mother Geeta Malik claimed he had recently got admission in a Dehradun school.