Karad was produced via a video link before the special court for MCOCA cases after the end of his CID custody
Walmik Karad. Pic/Screengrab
A court in Maharashtra's Beed district on Wednesday remanded Walmik Karad, accused in an extortion case in connection to the murder of sarpanch Santosh Deshmukh, in 14-day judicial custody, PTI reported.
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As per PTI, Karad was produced via a video link before the special court for Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) cases after the end of his CID custody.
The special court then sent him in judicial custody for 14 days.
Karad, a close aide of state minister Dhananjay Munde, was on January 14 booked under the stringent MCOCA and sent in 14-day judicial custody.
Subsequently, the police approached the special MCOCA court for his custody, PTI cited.
The court on January 15 had remanded him in the custody of a Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the CID, which is conducting an investigation into the case, till January 22.
Santosh Deshmukh, sarpanch of Massajog village in Beed district, was kidnapped, tortured and killed on December 9. Preliminary investigation indicated that Deshmukh had tried to resist an extortion attempt on an energy company operating a windmill project in the area, PTI reported.
Earlier, Karad was arrested in the extortion case linked to the murder after he surrendered before the police in Pune on December 31.
As per PTI, the sarpanch was killed because he was thought to be an obstacle in a plan to extort Rs 2 crore from an energy firm, and Walmik Karad was in contact with his killers when the crime was executed, the Maharashtra police's SIT told the court in Beed last week.
Beed sarpanch murder: Book Walmik Karad or we’ll end our lives, says Kin of dead sarpanch
Massajog sarpanch the late Santosh Deshmukh’s brother Dhananjay climbed up a water tank in the village demanding MCOCA against Walmik Karad, one of the accused in the Beed extortion case which is suspected of having led to Deshmukh’s murder on December 9, 2024.
On Monday morning, Dhananjay refused to climb down despite Maratha activist Manoj Jarange and district SP’s requests, but relented after a couple of hours, demanding that the police give him and his family a probe update and fulfil the demand by 10 am on Tuesday, failing which he threatened a mass suicide by his family and the fellow villagers.
According to reports, the drama began early in the morning when Dhananjay escaped the police eye to reach the water tank that supplies water to the village. The police were stationed in the village because he had threatened to climb up a cell phone tower.
The villagers gathered near the tank and the chief of Beed district police Navneet Kanwat also reached. Jarange and Kanwat urged Dhananjay to get down but he refused. Meanwhile, the rest of the Deshmukh family and some villagers also climbed up the tank, but couldn’t go up further.
A couple of hours passed by in negotiations. Dhananjay got down at about 1 pm. He posed many questions to the police and special investigation team that have been probing the murder. He said the family was not told about the progress in the case.
(With PTI inputs)
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