In December, Santosh Deshmukh, the village head (also known as a sarpanch) from Beed district in Maharashtra, was kidnapped, tortured, and killed. The people who did this recorded 15 videos, took 8 photos, and made 2 video calls during the incident. They abducted him because he tried to stop them from extorting money from an energy company.
The terrible details of Deshmukh’s murder made a lot of people upset. Dhananjay Munde, a leader in the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and a government minister, stepped down from his position on Tuesday because many people were demanding it after one of his aides, Walmiki Karad, was arrested for being involved in the case.
The videos showed Deshmukh being beaten with a pipe and stick, and he was forced to chant a phrase about one of his attackers. In another video, one of his attackers even urinated on him while he was hurt.
As the torture went on, one of the accused, Krishna Andhale, who is still on the run, made two video calls on WhatsApp. The police report doesn’t say who he called. They found broken pieces of the pipe that was used to hurt Deshmukh, and it turns out that Sudarshan Ghule, one of the main suspects, runs a crime gang in Beed. This gang has been involved in many illegal activities across various areas.
Munde initially wanted to explain his side of the story in front of the state assembly before he resigned. However, the chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and his colleague Ajit Pawar rejected his request after the brutal details of the murder became public and the videos spread on social media.
Karad, who helped Munde during his election campaign, is one of the seven people arrested. Munde’s cousin, Pankaja Munde, a leader in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), mentioned that Dhananjay Munde couldn’t do his job without Karad.
The videos and photos recorded by Deshmukh’s attackers are included in the police report, which many people have seen. This situation caused a protest, or bandh, in Beed on Tuesday. Sandeep Kshirsagar, a lawmaker from the NCP, said that things got tense when the videos were shared online. He added that it was good for the community that Munde has stepped down. The Beed Police also released a statement asking people to remain calm and not to take the law into their own hands.
Leave a Reply