A court in Maharashtra on Monday sentenced BJP minister Nitesh Rane to one month in jail in connection with a 2019 incident in which an NHAI engineer was publicly humiliated by being doused with mud.
The additional sessions court in Sindhudurg, presided over by judge V S Deshmukh, convicted Rane under Section 504 (intentional insult intended to provoke a breach of peace), while acquitting 29 other accused due to lack of evidence on charges such as rioting, assault on a public servant, and criminal conspiracy.
"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," the judge stated.
"If such incidents continue to occur, public servants would not be able to discharge their duties with dignity," the court noted, calling the act an "abuse of power" and adding that "it is the demand of time to curb such tendency".
The court, however, suspended Rane’s sentence, giving him time to appeal before a higher court.
The case dates back to July 4, 2019, when Rane, then a Congress MLA, summoned NHAI sub-divisional engineer Prakash Shedekar to inspect work on the Mumbai-Goa Highway near the Gad river bridge in Kankavli.
According to the prosecution, Rane and his supporters, angered by poor road conditions and waterlogging, poured muddy water on the engineer and forced him to walk through slush in public.
The court observed that the victim, a senior NHAI officer, was subjected to public humiliation.
"Despite that, he was made to walk through the muddy water in public. It would have certainly humiliated and insulted him," the judge said.
The court concluded that compelling the engineer to walk through muddy water "was nothing but an intentional insult to the informant," and an act of provocation likely to disturb public peace.
(With inputs from PTI)