Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Monday rejected the anticipatory bail plea of Bhartiya Janta Party MLA Nitish Rane in an attempt to murder case registered against him by the police in Sindhudurg district.
A single-judge bench of Justice C V Bhadang rejected the anticipatory bail application filed by Nitesh, son of Union minister Narayan Rane, but allowed the plea of another accused in the case, Manish Dalvi.
Nitesh’s advocate Niteen Pradhan then sought the high court to extend the police’s earlier assurance that no coercive action shall be taken against the MLA for one more week.
The bench then asked special public prosecutor Sudeep Pasbola if the police are willing to extend such assurance.
To which, Mr Pasbola responded by saying that the police will not take any coercive action against Nitesh for a week.
“We accept the police’s statement that it won’t take any coercive action against the applicant (Nitesh Rane) till January 27 by the way of last chance,” the high court said.
Nitesh and Mr Dalvi had sought anticipatory bail in the case registered against them by the Sindhurdurg police in December 2021 under sections 307 (attempt to murder), 120 (b) (criminal conspiracy) and 34 (common intention) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
Nitesh, however, claimed in his anticipatory bail application that he had been falsely implicated in the case and was being targeted due to political rivalry.
Rane’s plea also state that the FIR was registered against him possibly because he had allegedly mocked Shiv Sena minister Aaditya Thackeray during the recent sessions in the Maharashtra Assembly in December 2021.
Advocate Niteen Pradhan, appearing for Rane, had urged justice CV Bhadang to grant him interim protection of two weeks to approach the Supreme Court.
Nitesh, the son of Union minister Narayan Rane, represents Kankavli Assembly seat in the Sindhudurg district. He had filed a pre-arrest bail application in connection with an alleged attack on one Santosh Parab (44) on December 18, 2021, in the Kankavli region of Maharashtra.
According to the complaint, Parab was travelling on a bike when an Innova without a number plate hit him in Kankavli.
Parab said that a person came out of the car and stabbed him in the chest. He later told the police that when the assailants fled, he heard one of them say, “Should inform Gotya Sawant and Nitesh Rane.”
A Shiv Sena MLA had last month alleged that Nitesh Rane had made ‘meow meow’ sounds looking in the direction of Maharashtra minister and Sena MLA Aaditya Thackeray while he was going inside the Vidhan Bhavan building in Mumbai on December 23, 2021.
The Kankavli police had opposed Nitesh’s application stating that it was fallacious to say that he was being targeted due to political reasons or because of the dharna he had held outside the Vidhan Bhavan on December 23, 2021.
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