Police in Maharashtra's Beed district booked Maratha quota activist Manoj Jarange for allegedly making defamatory remarks against Minister Dhananjay Munde and inciting division between two sections of society. The complaint was filed by one Tukaram Aghav at the Parli police station. Jarange's comments, made during a rally in Parbhani on Saturday, targeted NCP minister Munde in connection with the murder of Beed sarpanch Santosh Deshmukh. He threatened that the Maratha community would not allow Munde to roam freely if Deshmukh's family faced harm.
Jarange's remarks angered Munde's supporters, who called for him to be booked and staged protests outside the Shivajinagar Police station in Beed. Santosh Deshmukh, the sarpanch of Massajog village in Beed district, was abducted, tortured, and murdered on December 9. The crime is believed to have been linked to his efforts to prevent an extortion attempt against an energy company running a windmill project.
Police have so far arrested seven persons over his murder. Walmik Karad, an associate of Munde, has been arrested in the extortion case. A Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Crime Investigation Department (CID) is probing into the matter. The murder has acquired a caste conflict angle as Deshmukh was a Maratha, while most of the accused are Vanjari, a dominant community in the Beed region.