Why Nitesh Rane got sentenced to one month in jail: The 2019 mud attack recall

Why Nitesh Rane got sentenced to one month in jail: The 2019 mud attack recallThe incident took place in 2019 and seven years later, a Maharashtra court sentenced Nitesh Rane to one-month jail term. Updated on: Apr 28, 2026 9:29 AM ISTWritten by Sana FaziliShare viaCopy link Almost seven years have passed since Maharashtra politician Nitesh Rane confronted an engineer of the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) over the poor condition of the Mumbai-Goa highway. On July 4, 2019, as Rane pushed the engineer, Prakash Shedekar, around and shouted at him in Marathi, his supporters poured buckets of mud over his head.Nitish Rane had reportedly called an engineer to a bridge over the Gad river in Kankavli for inspecting the work to widen the Mumbai-Goa Highway. (HT Photos )Shedekar was even tied to a bridge near Kankavli in Sindhudurg district of Maharashtra as Rane, who was associated with the Congress then, led the charge against the official.Also read: ‘6.6% votes, 86% seats’ after Raghav Chadha shift: BJP sees Punjab RS spike, but assembly polls a challengeRane had reportedly called Shedekar to a bridge over the Gad river in Kankavli for inspecting the work to widen the Mumbai-Goa Highway.Frustrated by the poor quality of the roadwork and waterlogging, Rane and his followers confronted the engineer, prosecution told the court on Monday, PTI reported. They poured muddy water on Shedekar and forced him to walk through slush in public.A video of the incident had surfaced on social media and kicked up a row.Rane, son of former union minister Narayan Rane, was among 30 people charged under various offences, including rioting, assault to deter a public servant, and criminal conspiracy. He was in Congress when the incident occurred and later switched to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).Also read: White House dinner shooting suspect charged with attempting to assassinate TrumpAll the accused, including Nitesh Rane, were acquitted of these offences, as the Sindhudurg court found insufficient evidence to support most of these claims. However, the Kankavali MLA was found guilty of assaulting a public servant and deterring them from performing their official duties under IPC section 504 (intentional insult meant to provoke a breach of public peace).‘Abuse of power’As the court Sindhudurg convicted Rane and sentenced him to one month in jail, it noted that lawmakers are not supposed to take the law into their hands."Even though Rane's intention was to raise a voice against the poor quality of work and inconvenience faced by the people, he was not supposed to humiliate or insult a public servant in public," additional sessions court judge V S Deshmukh was quoted as saying by PTI news agency."If such incidents continue to occur, public servants would not be able to discharge their duties with dignity," the judge noted.Calling the act "abuse of power", the court held that "it is the demand of time to curb such tendency".‘Intentional insult’The court further noted that the Shedekar was holding a high post in the NHAI when the incident took place. "Despite that, he was made to walk through the muddy water in public. It would have certainly humiliated and insulted him," the court remarked.The court held that the act compelling the engineer to walk through muddy water itself constituted intentional insult of a serving public official and was sufficient to attract liability, as mentioned in an earlier HT report.It concluded that forcing a public servant…

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