NCP MP Udayanraje held after HC rejects anticipatory bail plea

NCP MP Udayanraje Bhosale was on Tuesday arrested in Satara district after the Bombay High Court rejected his anticipatory bail plea in a case of alleged extortion and attempt to murder the owner of a manufacturing unit.

Bhosale went to the Satara city police station and presented himself before the officer-incharge following which he was arrested, a police official said. He was later produced before a local court which sent him to judicial custody for 14 days.

Bhosale, the Lok Sabha MP from Satara and a descendant of Chhatrapati Shivaji, was recently denied anticipatory bail by the high court upholding a lower court’s order in the case. The police registered a case against Bhosale and others on March 22 under the charges of rioting, attempt to murder and extortion.

Rajivkumar Jain, the owner of a manufacturing unit in Lonand Industrial Estate in the district, had alleged that Bhosale and his supporters had demanded “protection money” from him. Jain’s unit had remained closed for some time for maintenance and reopened in January 2016.

The public prosecutor in the case had told the high court that though Jain was paying wages to his labourers when the company was closed, he received a demand for Rs 2 lakh from Bhosale’s men. When he refused to pay, he was summoned to a guest house in Satara where he was slapped by Bhosale and later beaten up by his men.

Bhosale’s counsel Ashok Mundergi had said that the allegations were “totally baseless” and that the MP was “falsely implicated.”