Beed sarpanch murder: Court refuses to discharge four accused

Delivering the order on November 11, Special Judge VH Patwadkar held that witness statements and documents “prima facie, show complicity of the applicants/accused in the said crimes”

MUMBAI: A special MCOCA court in Maharashtra’s Beed district has refused to discharge four men accused in the abduction and killing of Santosh Deshmukh, a village sarpanch, linked to an extortion bid against a private energy company.

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Delivering the order on November 11, Special Judge VH Patwadkar held that witness statements and documents “prima facie, show complicity of the applicants/accused in the said crimes”.

According to investigations, eight individuals were arrested in connection with the sarpanch’s death, including a man described in police reports as being allegedly closely associated with former Maharashtra minister and senior NCP leader Dhananjay Munde.

The accused were booked under MCOCA, the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act and provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. Police have alleged that the killing stemmed from the victim’s intervention in an extortion demand said to involve a sum of ₹2 crore sought from Avaada Energy Pvt Ltd to ensure that its operations in Kaij taluka were not obstructed.

In their applications, the four accused — Pratik Ghule, Sudhir Sangale, Mahesh Kedar and Jayram Chate — asserted that they had been falsely implicated due to political circumstances and argued that no element of organised crime was made out. They also challenged the sanction granted under MCOCA.

The court rejected these arguments, finding that material on record showed a sequence of alleged threats to the company spanning several months. The order notes that the applicants and co-accused allegedly made repeated visits to the project site, warning staff that work would not continue unless the unlawful monetary demand was met.

When the village sarpanch intervened on one such occasion, the court recorded that a co-accused allegedly told him he “will see him and will not leave him”. The order states that on December 9 last year, the applicants and co-accused purportedly abducted the sarpanch from a toll point, assaulted him “by means of plastic pipe, gas pipe, iron rod, electric wire and sticks”, and later left the body at a roadside spot that evening.

Judge Patwadkar also noted allegations that the assault was video-recorded and shown to others “in order to create their terror in the vicinity”.