A court in Maharashtra’s Sindhudurg on Monday convicted minister Nitesh Rane in a case related to him pouring mud on a civic engineer and tying him to a bridge near Kankavli in 2019, PTI reported.
However, soon after, Additional Sessions Court Judge VS Deshmukh temporarily suspended the sentence to allow the Bharatiya Janata Party leader to appeal the verdict before a higher court.
“Even though Rane’s intention was to raise a voice against the poor quality of work and inconvenience faced by the people, he was not supposed to humiliate or insult a public servant in public,” the news agency quoted Deshmukh as saying.
The judge added that such incidents would not allow public servants to “discharge their duties with dignity”.
The incident took place on July 4, 2019, when Rane, who was a Congress MLA from Kankavli at the time, was inspecting potholes on the Mumbai-Goa highway. He was reportedly upset because of the deteriorating condition of the road.
In a video, the legislator was seen pushing the engineer, identified as Prakash Shede, while his supporters poured buckets of mud over the official’s head. A group of Rane’s supporters were then seen tying up Shede by the side of the bridge.
“Throw it [mud] on him,” Rane was heard saying in the video. “Throw it on his head. Now you will understand...What should people do, should they die in front of you? What will happen if the wall collapses?”
Thirty persons, including Rane, were named in the first information report and were charged with offences pertaining to rioting, assault to deter a public servant and criminal conspiracy, PTI reported.
On Monday, the court acquitted the others after finding insufficient evidence to support the claims. However, it held Rane guilty of assaulting a public servant and deterring them from performing duties.
The 2019 incident was not the first time Rane’s actions had sparked controversy.
In 2017, he had thrown a dead fish at the additional commissioner for fisheries in Sindhudurg during a meeting called to discuss problems faced by the fishermen in the Konkan region.
The BJP leader has also repeatedly made inflammatory statements targeting Muslims.
Rane had joined the Hindutva party in October 2019.
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