More arrests in Ketkar attack, NCP pulls up leader who backed it

THANE, MUMBAI JUNE 6 : Maharashtra police arrested three more people, including a civil engineer, on Friday for attacking the house of Loksatta editor Kumar Ketkar, protesting against an editorial in the Marathi daily published by The Indian Express Group even as the Nationalist Congress Party pulled up its state vice-president as his supporters were responsible for the violence.

Ketkar’s Thane residence was attacked on Thursday by activists of Shiv Sangram, a radical pro-Marathi organisation, over an editorial that mocked the state Government’s plan to install a 309-foot tall statue of Shivaji in the Arabian Sea off Marine Drive. The attackers, some 70-80 in number, pelted stones, damaged the window panes, and blackened his house with tar, but Ketkar and his wife escaped unhurt.

Thane’s Joint Commissioner of Police Madhu Shinde said three more Shiv Sangram activists had been arrested on Friday and tougher, non-bailable offences registered. The seven men arrested on Thursday were produced in a Thane court which remanded them to police custody until June 12.

Shiv Sangram founder Vinayak Methe would also be arrested soon, police said. Methe, who is the NCP’s state vice-president and a former MLC, had defended the attack on Ketkar’s house saying it was a spontaneous reaction to the editorial. On Friday, the NCP issued him a showcause notice asking why he should not be expelled from the party for “misconduct”.

“We have asked him to reply within seven days, after which we’ll take necessary action,” Maharashtra NCP general-secretary Gurunath Kulkarni told The Indian Express, adding that the NCP was a national party and the action of Methe’s followers was parochial and against party policy. “Methe probably wanted to hog the limelight overnight and did something which he should not have done,” Kulkarni said, adding that Methe would have to do a lot of explaining to the party.

Meanwhile, the Shiv Sena sought to do a balancing act by saying that while the anger of Shiv Sangram activists could be understood the attack on Ketkar’s house could not be justified. An editorial in the Sena mouthpiece Saamna said that it agreed with Ketkar that statues and memorials do not solve problems. But since most statues in the country were that of members of the Nehru-Gandhi family, the demolition of statues should begin from them, it said and added that Ketkar may have underestimated the significance of installing a statue of Shivaji.

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