A Mumbai court recently granted bail to a Pune resident who was apprehended for allegedly issuing a death threat to Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar on social media
Additional chief metropolitan magistrate (Esplanade court) L S Padhen allowed the bail plea of the accused, Sagar Barve, who is employed in the data feeding and analytics division of a private firm.
As per the prosecution, the complainant came across a post on social media on June 9, which contained a threat directed towards the NCP leader, likening his fate to that of anti-superstition activist Narendra Dabholkar. Dabholkar was tragically shot dead in Pune on August 20, 2013. The post originated from a page called “Rajkaran Maharashtra che,” and the message was attributed to a profile name “Narmadabai Patwardhan.” The complainant interpreted the message as a death threat against Sharad Pawar, prompting them to approach the police and register an FIR.
The crime branch, responsible for investigating the case, subsequently arrested the accused for his alleged involvement in issuing death threats.
In the bail application filed through advocate Dhrutiman Joshi, Barve maintained that he had been wrongly implicated in the case. The plea highlighted that the allegations were connected to an individual named Narmadabai Patwardan, and the prosecution had failed to establish a direct link between the accused and the mentioned account or the authorship of the comment.
Furthermore, the plea stated that the prosecution had not presented any evidence to substantiate the claim that the accused operated the said account.
