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As Walmik Karad surrenders, Opposition raises doubts, demands Dhananjay Munde’s resignation

Walmik Karad has been embroiled in a controversy following the murder of Santosh Deshmukh, a sarpanch in Maharashtra’s Beed district.

walmik karad murder caseKarad is a former NCP corporator and an aide of NCP minister Dhananjay Munde. (Screengrab from Video)

Hour after Walmik Karad surrendered before the Criminal Investigation Department in Pune on Tuesday, the Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) in Maharashtra hit out at the Mahayuti government, accusing it of “stage-managing” the entire episode and demanded NCP minister Dhananjay Munde’s resignation.

Karad, a close aide of Munde, has been embroiled in a controversy following the murder of Santosh Deshmukh, a sarpanch in Maharashtra’s Beed district, earlier this month. Deshmukh’s family has alleged Karad’s role in his murder.

“The role of the police in this case has come under cloud. Last night, the chief minister (Devendra Fadnavis) and Munde held a long meeting. Yesterday, they met and today, Karad surrenders. What a coincidence! This drama was stage-managed. The people of Maharashtra have doubts about this entire episode,” said Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Bhaskar Jadhav.

Baramati MP Supriya Sule referred to Deshmukh’s death and the death of a man following violence in Parbhani and said, “The two incidents of Parbhani and Beed are a blot on the face of Maharashtra. It is the duty of the government to ensure justice for the families of the two victims.”

“As for Karad’s surrender, I don’t think it is appropriate. I think he should have been arrested. I thought the government would move swiftly and arrest him. What is this surrender? A man is murdered brutally…Who will rub the tears of Deshmukh’s family?” Sule asked.

Sandeep Kshirsagar, the NCP (SP) MLA from Beed, met Fadnavis and said, “I have urged the chief minister to file a case under Section 302 for conspiracy to murder Santosh Deshmukh. As of now, only an extortion case has been filed against him (Karad) in this matter. I have also urged the chief minister to ask Munde to resign as minister till the investigation is completed.”

Before surrendering, Karad had released a video saying his name was being dragged into the murder case due to political vendetta.

Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades.   Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were  asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died.     Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More


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