Munde meets Ajit Pawar, leaves for his constituency

Tue, 14 January 2025

23:42

Maharashtra minister Dhananjay Munde, under fire over the murder of a village sarpanch in Beed district, on Tuesday evening met Deputy CM and his party president Ajit Pawar amid tension in his constituency Parli which saw stone pelting on buses.

Munde met Pawar at the latter's 'Devgiri' bungalow in south Mumbai for about 10 minutes and then left for Parli town in Beed district, around 380km from Mumbai.

"I informed Ajit Pawar about the current circumstances in Parli. Once the situation stabilises, I will address the media in the next two days," Munde told reporters before leaving for his assembly constituency.

Nationalist Congress Party minister Munde is facing calls for his resignation from the opposition, a demand supported by ruling Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Suresh Dhas, due to his links with Walmik Karad, arrested in an extortion case linked to the murder of Santosh Deshmukh, sarpanch of Massajog village, last month.

Deshmukh was abducted, tortured and murdered on December 9, apparently because he tried to thwart an attempt to extort money from an energy firm operating a windmill project in the central Maharashtra district.

On Tuesday, Karad, a close associate of Munde, was charged under the stringent anti-organised crime law MCOCA and remanded to 14 days of judicial custody by a court in Kej town of Beed district in the Rs 2 crore extortion case.

Supporters of Karad vented their anger over the invocation of MCOCA against him by throwing stones at buses, setting tyres on fire and attempting to block roads in Parli town.

The protests took place even though prohibitory orders had been in place in Beed district till January 28.

Some of them even reportedly threatened self-immolation.

Karad's mother staged a sit-in protest outside a police station demanding her son's release, while his wife accused IPS officer Basavaraj Teli, heading the SIT in the murder case, of bias, citing his 'connections' with Dhas, the MLA from Ashti in Beed district. -- PTI

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