Eight held for assaulting businessman over parking dispute get bail

PUNE: Eight people were arrested on Wednesday, a day after they and their one more accomplice brutally assaulted a businessman, his wife and two children with sticks, ransacked his home, stole gold ornaments and damaged a motorcycle following a dispute over removing a tempo parked outside his house at Sasaneali in Hadapsar on Sunday.



Arrested for rioting among other sections of the IPC after the businessman, Nitin Sasane (45), registered an FIR, all the eight people were released on bail by the Pune Cantonment court. Sasane, associated with a vocational training institute and an English school, was also arrested based on a counter-complaint filed by two women, accusing him of outraging their modesty under Section 354 of the IPC.

“The court rejected Sasane’s bail plea and he was sent to the Yerawada central jail,” said assistant inspector Dilip Gade of the Hadapsar police.

Sasane was called to the Hadapsar police chowkey earlier in the day. He told TOI, “We were unable to remove our motorcycle on Sunday because of a tempo parked outside our house. I asked the tempo operator to remove it, but he abused me and threatened to teach me a lesson. I then lodged a non-cognizable complaint against him.”

He said the tempo operator and eight others came to his house on Tuesday evening with bamboo and hockey sticks on the pretext of conducting an inquiry about the Sunday’s incident. “They suddenly attacked me. They also assaulted my wife, son and daughter for intervening in the dispute.”

Sasane claimed that the suspects snatched earring, gold chains, bracelet and wrist watch of his wife and children and fled after he called the Police Control Room (100). “I got stitches on my head and suffered injuries on right hand, legs and back,” he said.

“The dispute between me and the suspects — all members of a mandal — started after I stopped paying them vargani (donation) on festive occasions. They have been harassing me and my family. I filed three non-cognizable complaints against them,” he said.

Sasane also filed a complaint application on September 17, 2018, giving details of their misdeeds, including eve-teasing women. “I appealed to the senior inspector to take stringent action against them, but in vain,” he said.

Sasane said, “I was called to the Hadapsar chowkey for conducting an inquiry on the complaint application and was later told that a counter-complaint of molestation was registered against me.”

Assistant inspector Gade said, “The suspects claimed that Sasane had misbehaved with the two women.”