Delhi excise scam case: BJP stages protest at AAP office, demands CM Kejriwal resign
New Delhi (PTI): Delhi BJP leaders and workers on Saturday staged a protest at the AAP office here demanding the resignation of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal after the ED named him in a charge sheet in the excise scam case.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has named Kejriwal in its charge sheet related to the liquor scam of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government and he should resign from the post of chief minister of Delhi, state BJP president Virendra Sachdeva said.
No immediate reaction was available from the AAP to the allegations.
The BJP will keep on exposing the "corruption" of the Kejriwal government which is weakening Delhi like a "termite", Sachdeva alleged during the protest.
"If he has any morality left in him, Kejriwal should resign now," he said.
Leader of Opposition in the Delhi Assembly, Ramvir Singh Bidhuri, said the BJP has been saying that the liquor scam was done under the protection of Kejriwal and it has now been proven by the ED charge sheet.
The ED has claimed in its supplementary charge sheet filed in the court that a part of the alleged Rs 100 crore "kickbacks" generated in the scrapped Delhi excise policy was used in the AAP's 2022 Goa assembly election campaign.
It has also claimed that a close aide of the Delhi chief minister arranged a video call through facetime (a video calling facility on iPhone) on his phone for one of the accused Sameer Mahandru.
In the call, Kejriwal told Mahandru that the aide is "his boy" and he should trust him and carry on with him, the ED has claimed.
Kejriwal has dismissed the ED charge sheet, alleging that cases filed by the agency are "fake" and are used to "topple" governments and buy MLAs at the behest of the Centre.
#WATCH | Delhi: BJP workers protest outside AAP office against CM Arvind Kejriwal over alleged liquor scam. pic.twitter.com/Hm5tkekPon
— ANI (@ANI) February 4, 2023
शराब घोटाले को लेकर दिल्ली में बीजेपी का प्रदर्शन.
— आदित्य RSBD (@AdityaRsbd) February 4, 2023
ED की अभी तक की जाँच में सामने आये तथ्यों के आधार पर अरविंद केजरीवाल के इस्तीफ़े की माँग.
AAP कार्यालय का घेराव करने पहुँचे हैं बीजेपी के सैकड़ों कार्यकर्ता.
बैरिकेड लगाकर बंद किया DDU मार्ग.#LiquorPolicy #AAP #BJP #protest pic.twitter.com/8K2LCa2zKg
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2019 mud attack on engineer: Maharashtra court sentences BJP minister Nitesh Rane to one-month jail
Mumbai (PTI): A court in Sindhudurg on Monday convicted Maharashtra 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.
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Calling the act "abuse of power", the court held that "it is the demand of time to curb such tendency".
Rane, a son of former Union minister Narayan Rane, was among 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, then a Congress MLA, had called the Sub-Divisional Engineer of the National Highway Authority, Prakash Shedekar, to a bridge over the Gad river in Kankavli on July 4, 2019, for inspecting the work to widen the Mumbai-Goa Highway.
According to the prosecution, Nitesh Rane and his followers, frustrated by the poor quality of the roadwork and waterlogging, confronted the engineer. They poured muddy water on Shedekar and forced him to walk through slush in public.
The court, after perusing the evidence on record, noted that the informant (victim) was holding a high post in the National Highway Authority.
"Despite that, he was made to walk through the muddy water in public. It would have certainly humiliated and insulted him," the court remarked.
The judge held that Rane compelling Shedekar to walk through the muddy water "was nothing but an intentional insult to the informant," and provocation which will cause him to break the public peace.
