BJP MLA held for firing at Shiv Sena leader booked in SC/ST case for abusing woman

Thane: Maharashtra BJP MLA Ganpat Gaikwad, who is accused of shooting at a Shiv Sena leader inside a police station in Thane district, has been booked in an SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act case, an official said on Sunday.

Gaikwad was booked on the complaint of a villager who claimed she was subjected to casteist abuse by him and seven others on January 31, the official added. Gaikwad had pumped six bullets into Kalyan Shiv Sena leader Mahesh Gaikwad and also injured the latter’s associate Rahul Patil late Friday night inside the cabin of the Hill Line police station’s senior inspector. The three-time Kalyan East MLA has been charged with attempt to murder and other offences in the case.

‘On the complaint of a resident of Dwarli village on Saturday, Ganpat Gaikwad and seven others were charged under the Indian Penal Code and Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act,’ a Hill Line police station official said. ‘A probe into the allegations of the woman, who is a land owner, is underway,’ the station house officer of Hill Line police station said.

Meanwhile, Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray on Sunday claimed a “gang war” has broken out in the Maharashtra alliance govt and said PM Narendra Modi should understand that the state BJP unit has “weakened” due to the induction of leaders into it by breaking other parties. The former state CM’s remarks came two days after an incident of firing by an MLA of the ruling BJP on a local Shiv Sena leader (belonging to Chief Minister Eknath Shinde camp) at a police station in Ulhasnagar area of Thane district. The MLA, Ganpat Gaikwad (56), has been arrested. Shiv Sena’s Kalyan unit chief Mahesh Gaikwad (40), who was attacked, was in a critical condition. Addressing a rally at Sawantwadi in Maharashtra’s Sindhudurg district, Thackeray said the previous Shiv-Sena BJP government in the 1990s had broken the back of underworld gangs in Mumbai.