Police custody till December 27 for former NCP functionary in Beed sarpanch murder

Beed: Former tehsil chief of NCP in Maharashtra’s Beed district, Vishnu Chate, arrested in an extortion case linked to the kidnap and murder of village head Santosh Deshmukh, was on Thursday remanded to police custody till December 27.

Chate is the fourth accused to be arrested in the murder case. He was produced before a court in Kej tehsil of Beed district on Thursday. Those arrested earlier are Jairam Chate, Mahesh Kedar and Pratik Ghule.

Police are on the lookout for three others who have been named as wanted accused for kidnapping and murdering Santosh Deshmukh, sarpanch of Massajog village in Beed district, and brutally killing him on December 9.

The post mortem report of Deshmukh mentions as many as 50 to 60 injury marks on the body, sources said.

Vishnu Chate, who was on the run after the murder, was arrested on Wednesdy by the crime branch from Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar in the extortion case being probed by the Beed police.

Vishnu Chate allegedly demanded Rs 2 crore from an energy company that had installed a windmill in the district and threatened to stop their operations if their demands were not met, police said.

Deshmukh had tried to intervene and stop the extortion due to which he was abducted from his car and taken in another car on December 9. He is alleged to have been tortured and killed by the accused persons following which an FIR was registered against seven, including Vishnu Chate.

Another FIR was registered on the complaint of the energy company, alleging extortion by Vishnu Chate, Walmik Karad and another person.

Following the murder, there were protests across Beed, especially after photographs of Deshmukh’s body with injury marks was shared widely on social media.

While Deshmukh belongs to the Maratha community, Vishnu Chate, considered one of the masterminds, and two other accused are from the Vanjari community of the Other Backward Classes (OBCs), giving a caste angle to the entire incident, especially against the backdrop of the Maratha quota agitation and opposition by OBCs to it.

Opposition leaders have claimed that Walmik Karad is a close associate of NCP minister Dhananjay Munde who hails from Beed district.

Raising the issue in the state assembly on Wednesday, Suresh Dhas, BJP MLA from Ashti constituency in Beed district, said Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis should form a special investigation team (SIT) to find the mastermind behind Deshmukh’s kidnapping and murder.

NCP (SP) MP from Beed, Bajrang Sonawane, met Union Home Minister Amit Shah in Delhi recently and demanded a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into the brutal murder of Santosh Deshmukh.