Mumbai: Police resorted to a lathi charge and a fresh FIR against several ‘political’ workers after they allegedly vandalised and created a ruckus outside Mumbai North East candidate Mihir Kotecha’s office on Friday evening. According to the FIR, the ruckus started after the UBT Shiv Sena workers claimed that money was being distributed by BJP for votes.
Several videos of the incident went viral on social media platforms where the police were seen restricting the alleged political workers outside Kotecha’s office. As the ruckus turned violent thereby impacting the law-and-order situation, police restored the lathi charge on them.
Later on Saturday, during the early hours, Madhav Bhangre (42) filed an FIR at the Mulund police station, a BMC official working at the ‘T’ ward, but with the elections in line, he has been roped for election duty.
As per Bhangre, on Friday, while on election duty, their team received a message on cVigil, an application developed by the Election Commission of India (ECI) that allows users to report violations of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC). The spot where the alleged violation was reported was the office of Kotecha, where the team visited and found people working there, while Rs. 50,000 cash was found. As per ECI, amid the election season, people should have valid documents if they are carrying cash above Rs. 50,000 and new articles/gifts worth over Rs. 10,000.
Since the cash was worth Rs. 50,000, Bhangre said it was inquired with the people present inside and they said it was for ‘daily office expenses’. When asked for documents regarding the money, Bhangre’s team was told it would be ‘submitted later’. The money was confiscated by them.
During this procedure, Bhangre added that a group of people started to bang on the door of the office and they were more than 25 in number. Police officials were alerted about the same as part of the usual protocol.
However, as soon as Bhangre’s team started to move out, the alleged group of people started to push the officials including Bhangre. He added that some even tried to snatch the confiscated money. Bhangre added that the group even started to pull the on-duty officials’ identity cards. Looking at the situation, Mulund police officials started to lathi charge the ‘workers’ till Bhangre’s team managed to safely get to their vehicles.
By the end of the day, police detained several people who were taken to the police station and Bhangre’s team was summoned too, to identify the vandals. Five were identified who are Abhijit Chauhan, Gurujyot Singh, Rohit Chikne, Dinesh Jadhav, and Pratik Kotak – who were later arrested by the police. As per the FIR, there are more than 20 to 25 individuals who are yet to be identified by the police.
All of them have been booked under sections 353 (assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty), 332 (voluntarily causes hurt to any person being a public servant in the discharge of his duty), 341 (wrongful restraint), 143 (unlawful assembly), 147 (rioting), among others of the Indian Penal Code.
