- Saturday, April 27, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
INDIA’S minister of micro, small and medium enterprises Narayan Rane was on Tuesday (24) arrested for wanting to slap Uddhav Thackeray, the chief minister of the western Indian state of Maharashtra for what he claimed was the latter’s ignorance of the year of India’s independence. Rane was arrested at Sangameshwar in the state’s Ratnagiri district by a police team from the city of Nashik. He was being taken back to Nashik, located 260 miles away. His arrest also saw clashes between supporters of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Sena in Mumbai, the capital of Maharashtra.
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Rane’s colleague in the BJP Prasad Lad, a member of the state legislative council, said the party condemned the way in which the police behaved with Rane and arrested him. According to Lad, Rane was having food when he was manhandled and arrested. He also said that it was not clear under which section Rane was arrested and that they were “fearing for his life”, The Indian Express reported. Devendra Fadnavis, who is the leader of the Opposition in Maharashtra legislative assembly and a former chief minister of the state, said the BJP did not support Rane’s remarks but will stand by the parliamentarian if the state government led by Sena misused power against him.
The Nashik Police on Tuesday issued orders for the immediate arrest of Rane, who is a member of Rajya Sabha or the upper chamber of the Indian parliament, after a first information report (FIR) was registered against him there over his controversial remarks. A police team from Nashik left for Ratnagiri district, where Rane was carrying out his ‘Jan Ashirwad Yatra’ (public communications exercise to get people’s blessings) after the city’s police commissioner, Deepak Pandey, issued orders for the minister’s arrest, an official source said.
Rane’s arrest came after a sessions court in Ratnagiri rejected his pre-arrest bail plea. The minister had sought through his lawyers interim protection from arrest in connection with the case filed by the police in Nashik, The Express added. The lawyers also wanted a transit anticipatory bail, seeking time to approach a court in Nashik where the FIR was filed. The court rejected that plea as well. A separate anticipatory bail plea filed by Rane in connection with the same FIR was also rejected. B N Patil, the district magistrate of Ratnagiri, said Rane was held after all legal options were exhausted.
Rane, who was once in Thackeray’s Shiv Sena and even served as its chief minister in the 1990s, sparked off a row over his remarks about slapping Thackeray saying he did not know the year when India got its independence.
“It is shameful that the chief minister does not know the year of independence. He leaned back to enquire about the count of years of independence during his speech. Had I been there, I would have given (him) a tight slap,” Rane said during his Jan Ashirwad Yatra in Raigad district of the state on Monday (23).
A police complaint was lodged against Rane, 69, soon after by the Nashik city Sena unit chief and based on that, an FIR was registered against the leader in Nashik under sections 500 (defamation), 505(2) (mischief), 153-B (1)(c) (remarks likely to cause disharmony, or feeling of enmity or hatred or ill-will) of the Indian Penal Code, a police official said.
The team that left to arrest Rane was asked to produce him before a court in Nashik, the official source said, adding that the team was asked to follow the due procedure for arresting the Union minister.
“We are going by the facts of the case after the registration of an offence against Rane. We are following the rule of law,” Pandey said, adding the arrest was needed to prevent the repetition of such an offence.
After Rane’s arrest, Indian vice president Venkaiah Naidu will be informed as Rane is a member of the Rajya Sabha, the official said.
Meanwhile, in Aurangabad in Maharashtra, Shiv Sena’s spokesperson Ambadas Danve lodged a police complaint against Rane over his remarks on Thackeray and Sena workers were seen beating a photo of Rane with footwear. The minister was also mocked over the poultry business that he ran in Chembur area of Mumbai five decades ago when he had joined the Sena and the protesters also released a couple of hens as a symbolic protest. The women’s wing of the Sena also agitated against Rane, Danve said.
“Earlier, Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray used to call Narayan Rane as ‘Naru‘, which is the name of a disease in Marathi. The Shiv Sena has a remedy for this disease,” he said. According to him, Rane made the statement to provoke the Sena.
The accused minister, however, was in no mood to surrender. On Tuesday, he defended his remarks made against Thackeray saying he hadn’t committed any crime. When asked about the speculation that he would be arrested, Rane said he was not a “normal man” and slammed the media instead over making such reports.
“I haven’t committed any crime. You should verify and show it on TV or else I will file a case against you (media). Despite not committing any crime, the media is showing speculative news about my ”imminent” arrest. “Do you think I am a normal (ordinary) man?” he said.
Rane was a Sena member between 1968 and 2005 when he was expelled from the party after he allegedly started showing a show of strength. He joined the Indian National Congress and continued in that party till 2017. That year, he floated his own party Maharashtra Swabhiman Paksha and in 2019, he merged it with prime minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party. In July, Rane became a cabinet minister in the Modi government.
