Maharashtra BJP minister Nitesh Rane gets one-month jail for pouring mud on government staff

AMaharashtra margaret court has convicted BJP government minister Nitesh Rane in the 2019 caseful of pouring clay on a subject Highway Authority of India (NHAI) engineer, and sentenced him to one month in jail.The verdict pertains to a 2019 incident in which Rane and his supporters poured mud on an NHAI deputy engineer, Prakash Shedekar, during a protest over the poor condition of the Mumbai-Goa highway.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 Sindhudurg court found insufficient evidence to support most of these claims. However, the Kankavali MLA was found guilty of assaulting a public servant and deterring them from performing their official duties under IPC section 504 (intentional insult meant to provoke a breach of public peace). Later, the court suspended Rane's sentence, allowing him time to appeal before a higher court, while acquitting 29 other accused in the case.What the court said in the Nitesh Rane verdict"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".The caseNitesh Rane had called the NHAI Sub-Divisional Engineer to a bridge over the Gad river in Kankavli on July 4, 2019, to inspect the work to widen the Mumbai-Goa Highway.According to the prosecution, Rane and his followers, frustrated by the poor quality of the roadwork and waterlogging, confronted the engineer. They poured muddy water on the engineer 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 NHAI."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's compelling Shedekar to walk through the muddy water "was nothing but an intentional insult to the informant," and that it was a provocation that would cause him to break the public peace.