Sindhudurg (Maharashtra), July 4 (IANS) Irked over the poor condition of the Mumbai-Goa highway, Congress legislator Nitesh Rane and his supporters vented their ire on a road sub-engineer by bathing him with wet mud and slime, and even attempted to tie him to a bridge here on Thursday.
Following a complaint lodged by the victim, Prakash Shedekar, a sub-engineer with the PWD, the police have arrested Rane and five other activists of the Maharashtra Swabhiman Party (MSP).
The police have charged Rane and others with sections pertaining to obstructing a government servant, abuse, assault. Further investigations are on.
PWD staff all over the state have launched an agitation to protest against the treatment meted out to Shedekar.
MSP President and former Chief Minister Narayan Rane, the father of Nitesh Rane, admitted that what happened was wrong and said that he would apologise to the concerned engineer on behalf of his son.
Earlier this afternoon, Nitesh Rane, accompanied by Kankavli Municipal Council President and activists of the NDA-affiliated MSP, went to inspect road repairing work being carried out on a stretch of a bridge on the Gad River near Kankavli.
They accosted sub-engineer Shedekar, questioning him on the bad condition of the roads besides lecturing him on how people had to battle slime and mud on the potholed roads routinely.
"People are bearing it daily... Now, you also experience it," some of the activists said as they emptied a couple of buckets full of slime on Shedekar, abused him, roughed him up and pushed him around.
Some wet mud even fell on Nitesh Rane, who sought an explanation from the sub-engineer on the bad condition of roads and why a service road was not yet constructed as assured by the authorities. He also gave Shedekar a "15-day ultimatum" to build the service road for the benefit of pedestrians.
The activists demanded to know "who has given you the right to sink Kankavli under slime" and some activists took him around in the wet mud to show him the ground reality.
At one point, Rane and other activists were seen attempting to tie Shedekar to a pole on the under-construction bridge, ostensibly to teach him a lesson.
Videos of the incident went viral on social media, evoking mixed reactions with many condemning the incident.
Though Narayan Rane did not defend his son, he pointed out that people have been suffering since long with the miserable road conditions but the local authorities were ignoring their plight.
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