A day after the Palghar lynching row forced the ruling BJP in Maharashtra to stay his induction into the party, Kashinath Chaudhari, former NCP(SP) leader and Palghar Zilla Parishad member, said Tuesday that he was being “unfairly targeted” and that his family was facing the “brunt of political conspiracy against him”.
The BJP’s Monday move came just a day after it inducted Chaudhari into its fold, leading to attacks from the Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance, which raked up the former’s earlier bid to call him a “key accused” in the lynching of two sadhus and their driver in Palghar during the Covid lockdown in April 2020.
“I was on the spot (the venue of the Palghar lynching) to control the mob. I would never imagine beating and killing sadhus as I have utmost respect for them. I have told everything to the probe agencies, and I am still being defamed,” said Chaudhari while breaking down before the media persons.
He was with the then undivided Sharad Pawar-led NCP when the Palghar lynching incident occurred. The Uddhav Thackeray-led MVA was then ruling the state.
A key NCP leader in Palghar, Chaudhari was the party’s president in the Dahanu tehsil. He also contested the 2014 Assembly elections from the Dahanu seat, but finished as the second runner-up in a contest won by the BJP.
In the run-up to the upcoming local body elections, Chaudhari was last week seen at a BJP event with the party’s Palghar MP Hemant Savara.
As part of its ambitious expansion plan, the BJP inducted Chaudhari and some other NCP(SP) leaders Sunday, which triggered a backlash from the Opposition besides sparking a row over social media.
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Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis justified the decision to take Chaudhari on board, saying the local BJP unit has done its “due diligence” before getting him to join the party. However, as the row snowballed with the Congress as well as NCP(SP) leaders like Supriya Sule and Rohit Pawar targeting the BJP over its “hypocrisy and double-standards”, state BJP president Ravindra Chavan stayed the decision.
When asked about reports that the BJP has promised him the Palghar Zilla Parishad chief after the local body polls, Chaudhari denied it. “The BJP leadership did not make any promise to me. I decided that it is necessary to spread the message of welfare schemes and works done by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and implemented by CM Fadnavis. I, therefore, decided to join the BJP,” he said.
The two sadhus and their driver were allegedly lynched in a Palghar village by a mob, which suspected them to be “child-kidnappers and organ harvesters”. The three were driving to a funeral in Surat when a group of villagers in Gadchinchle, a tribal village in a remote area of Palghar, stopped their car and attacked them with stones, logs and axes.
The incident had set off a political storm in Maharashtra, with the then principal Opposition BJP using it to put the MVA government in the dock. The BJP also demanded a CBI probe into the case, even as the MVA accused the party of politicising the issue. In all, 251 adults were arrested and 15 juveniles held in the case, which was transferred to the CBI after the MVA government fell following the rebellion of the Shiv Sena’s Eknath Shinde.
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In the aftermath of the lynching incident, several BJP leaders, including Sambit Patra and Sunil Deodhar, had accused Chaudhari of being present on the spot where the lynching took place. He was first questioned by the CID and later by the CBI, but was never named as an accused in the case, which has since been pending in a local trial court.
“My son stays in a hostel in Mumbai and his friends are harassing him since yesterday. They are targeting him after the media started showing me as an accused in the lynching case. It is unbearable. Why should politics affect my children,” said Chaudhari.
When pointed out that it was the BJP which had claimed that he was an “accused” in the Palghar lynching, he said, “I don’t want to put blame on anyone (in the BJP). I have neither talked to anyone nor any senior BJP leader is giving me any orders.”
NCP(SP) leader and ex-MLA from neighbouring Vikramgadh Assembly seat, Sunil Bhusara, said the row was “nothing more than the BJP’s pressure tactics”. “BJP could not win Dahanu seat (in the 2024 polls) and was defeated by the CPI(M). The party knew Kashinath Chaudhari’s influence and want to increase their votes. Morality and honesty are alien concepts to the BJP and therefore it shamelessly inducted the person whom it had accused of lynching,” he charged.
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Bhusara said the BJP should now also explain whether its lynching allegation against Chaudhari was “wrong” or not.