Trainee IAS officer Puja Khedkar's mother detained over viral gun video
The police have registered a first information report (FIR) against Manorama and her husband Dilip Khedkar besides five others.
The mother of controversial probationary IAS officer Puja Khedkar was detained after she was seen brandishing gun in a viral video, police said. Pankaj Deshmukh, SP, Pune Rural Police, confirmed that Manorama Khedkar was detained from Mahad, located in the Raigad district of Maharashtra.
Manorama is being brought to Pune in connection with a case registered against her and six others for allegedly threatening farmers by brandishing gun.
“We have detained her from Mahad. She is on her way here. We will question her and take further legal action. She was found in a hotel in Mahad,” Deshmukh told ANI.
Read: Cops ask Puja Khedkar for statement on harassment charges against collector
The purported video shows Manorama Khedkar in a heated altercation with neighbours in a village in Pune. The two-minute footage shows Khedkar, accompanied by her security guards, yelling at a man while waving a pistol in his face before attempting to conceal the weapon.
The incident in the video was about a land parcel bought by Puja's father Dilip Khedkar, a retired Maharashtra government officer, in Dhadwali village in Pune's Mulshi tehsil, an official earlier said. Locals had claimed the Khedkars had encroached on the land of neighbouring farmers.
Read: What the Khedkar saga uncovers
The Pune Rural Police had announced an investigation last week to verify the facts of the incident, including whether Manorama Khedkar had a valid license for the firearm in question.
The Khedkar family has been under intense media scrutiny after Puja Khedkar, a 2023-batch IAS officer, kicked up controversy with her alleged demands for a separate office and official car and unauthorised use of a beacon on her private car during her posting in Pune.
She now faces allegations of misrepresenting her eligibility as an OBC non-creamy layer candidate in her Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) application. She also claimed to be visually and mentally disabled but refused to undergo tests to validate these claims.
However, the government on Tuesday put on hold the district training programme of Khedkar as she was summoned back to the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration in Uttarakhand's Mussoorie for "necessary action". A letter by Maharashtra additional chief secretary Nitin Gadre said the academy had decided to put her district training programme on hold, and immediately recalled her.