Mumbai: A court in Sindhudurg on Monday convicted state minister Nitesh Rane in a 2019 case of pouring mud on an NHAI engineer when he was in opposition, and sentenced him to one-month imprisonment, noting that lawmakers are not supposed to take the law into their hands.
Later, the court suspended Rane's sentence, allowing him time to appeal before a higher court, while acquitting 29 other accused in the case.
"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," additional sessions court judge V S Deshmukh stated. "If such incidents continue to occur, public servants would not be able to discharge their duties with dignity," the judge noted.
Calling the act "abuse of power", the court held that "it is the demand of time to curb such tendency". Rane was among the 30 people charged under various offences, including rioting, assault to deter a public servant, and criminal conspiracy. He was in Congress when the incident occurred. All the accused, including Nitesh Rane, were acquitted of these offences, as the court found insufficient evidence to support most of these claims. However, the court found Nitesh Rane guilty of an offence under section 504 (intentional insult meant to provoke a breach of public peace) and sentenced him to one month's jail.
Rane had called sub-divisional engineer Prakash Shedekar to a bridge over the Gad river in Kankavli on July 4, 2019, for inspecting work to widen Mumbai-Goa Highway. The prosecution said Rane and others, frustrated by the poor quality of the roadwork and waterlogging, poured muddy water on Shedekar and forced him to walk through slush in public. The judge held that Rane compelling Shedekar to walk through muddy water "was an intentional insult to the informant."
