Senior Shiv Sena leader Madhukar Sarpotdar (75) was rushed to the Hinduja Hospital at Mahim in Mumbai on Wednesday morning, after complaining of chest pain.
A court on Friday granted bail to senior Shiv Sena leader and former Member of Parliament Madhukar Sarpotdar, who has been sentenced to one-year imprisonment in a 1992-93 riot case in Mumbai.
Former Shiv Sena MP Madhukar Sarpotdar and two other party workers sentenced to one year imprisonment for inciting violence during the 1992-93 communal clashes in Mumbai.
The special riots court on Saturday issued a bailable warrant against Police Inspector (PI) Madhav Khanolkar, prime witness in the 1993 riots case against Shiv Sena leader Madhukar Sarpotdar. The warrant was issued after Khanolkar failed to appear before the court at the last two hearings despite summons served to him. Khanolkar, now retired, was a police inspector at the Nirmal Nagar police when the case against Sarpotdar was registered.
A prime witness in the 1993 riots case identified Shiv Sena leader Madhukar Sarpotdar before a special riots court in Mumbai on Friday.Police Inspector Madhav Khanolkar told the court that he was on duty on December 27, 1992, when a mob of people from the Ganesh Utsav Samiti Mandal gathered near the Ganesh temple in suburban Kherwadi area of Mumbai. He said that Sarpotdar, one K P Naik and Ramesh Pawar from the Sena were present with the trustees of the Mandal.
Polls: 70% vote in Malvan; 35% in Mumbai NW
Dutt was on Tuesday elected from the Mumbai North-West Parliamentary constituency in Maharashtra
State Revenue Minister Narayan Rane of the Congress is pitted against Parshuram Uparkar of Shiv Sena in a straight contest in Malvan in Konkan region.
Over 16 lakh voters are eligible to cast their franchise in the by-election necessitated by the death of Dutt on May 25.
Shiv Sena executive president Uddav Thackeray, who is in Pune, is expected to make the formal announcement on Satpotdar's candidature in Mumbai.
The 'flaming torch' symbol was used by the Sena in the past during civic body and assembly polls.
In her statement, Dutt has hailed and thanked her "mentor" United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi.
'The narrative that is the ruling party is using on Pulwama is not productive.' 'I do not think Modi and the BJP will get more votes because of that incident and the response to it,' says Aakar Patel.
'The Sena can quickly reduce most solutions to violence.' 'When in power, it will revert to this gene which is coded into it and we will no doubt produce entertaining and frightening moments,' says Aakar Patel.
'No one talks about the Mumbai riots anymore, though like Delhi 1984, the guilty have not been punished. In Gujarat, many powerful leaders of the state's ruling party are in jail for their role in the riots... In Mumbai, only one politician of the Shiv Sena, a former MP, was convicted of hate speech, along with two other Shiv Sainiks, one of whom was a corporator and the other a junior functionary... So why the apathy? Could it be because despite these statistics and the widely-publicised findings of the Srikrishna Commission, what remained in public consciousness was the violence by the Muslims, thanks to a highly efficient Sena propaganda machine? There's no demand for it, but would an SIT probe into the closed cases of the Mumbai riots help today?' The fadeout of Mumbai's riots from public debate can be called a triumph of the communal State, argues Jyoti Punwani.
'It wasn't as if the senior police inspectors in charge of the police stations were not aware of the communal tension that was being created in their areas before and during the riots.' 'Yet they chose not to act,' recalls Jyoti Punwani.
'It was a reaffirmation of his party's unrelenting defiance of its erstwhile ally, the BJP; an attempt to forge a new relationship with the community the Shiv Sena had always targeted; and a pointer towards the political imperative of taking everyone along if the fight against the ruling party had to succeed,' notes Jyoti Punwani.
The septuagenarian politician, once the right hand man of Bal Thackeray, is now battling irrelevance in a Balasaheb-less Shiv Sena
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