Mumbai: The opposition leaders of Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) have questioned the killing of Akshay S. Shinde, the key accused in the Badlapur rape case in a police encounter, while his parents have claimed that it was a ‘contract killing’ by Thane Police, here on Tuesday.
MVA allies Nationalist Congress Party (SP) President Sharad Pawar and former Minister Anil Deshmukh, Shiv Sena (UBT)’s Aditya Thackeray, Chief Spokesperson Sanjay Raut, MP Priyanka Chaturvedi, and others criticised the MahaYuti government on various counts, seeking a probe by a retired High Court judge.
Pawar questioned the laxity of the Home Department in transferring the main accused, as the injustice meted out on the two minor girls in the Badlapur school should have been executed within the proper framework of the law.
“It seems the government has become weak in showing the threat of the laws so that nobody would dare think of such a reprehensible act in the future. We expect that the exact situation will come out after a thorough probe,” Pawar said.
Aditya Thackeray raised many doubts on where is the trustee of the (Adarsh Vidya Prasarak Sanstha – AVPS) school, why they are being protected by the MahaYuti government, and why is the Shiv Sena leader Waman Mhatre being shielded.
“The citizens who joined the protest are being treated like gangsters. Will the cases against them be withdrawn? They were raising their voice against the police refusal to file the complaint of the victim’s parents a week after — who were the police protecting? It is said that the school is affiliated with the Bharatiya Janata Party. Is it true? The government must answer,” Thackeray demanded.
The former Home Minister, Anil Deshmukh, wondered how “when the hands of the accused were tied up, he could grab a pistol and start firing” and sought to know the status of the absconding ACPS trustees.
“The accused, Akshay Shinde, was working as a toilet sweeper in the school (since August 1), then. Where did he learn to operate a firearm and fire to injure himself and a police official,” Raut asked.
“The accused is dead. The other co-accused, who were school trustees and BJP workers, are on the run. Such a textbook case of shoot-and-scoot tactics applied an incompetent government. Coming soon: Nobody sexually assaulted the minor girls, a story written, sponsored and executed by the state government,” said Chaturvedi in a jibe at the MahaYuti government.
Akshay Shinde’s parents — father Anna and mother Alka — on Tuesday morning have refused to believe the police claims of a ‘shootout inside the van’ in which their only son was killed.
“This is a contract killing by the police… The government must take strong action against the perpetrators who killed our son,” wailed Alka Shinde.
The SIT, named by Thane Police Commissioner Ashutosh Dumbre late Monday night, got cracking on the case by carrying out a spot investigation of the site where the purported ‘encounter’ took place around 6 p.m. on Monday and also inspected the vehicle in which Akshay Shinde was being ferried from Taloja to Thane.
The sleuths have collected forensic evidence of the sites while Akshay Shinde’s body has been sent to the government-run J. J. Hospital in Mumbai for an autopsy, likely to be carried out on Tuesday, before handing it over to the Shinde family.
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–IANS
