12 August,2025 08:37 PM IST | Mumbai | mid-day online correspondent
The incident occurred on September 26, 2018 when Bachchu Kadu had visited a govt office in Mumbai. File Pic/X
Seven years after he assaulted a public servant, former Maharashtra MLA Bachchu Kadu was on Tuesday convicted and sentenced to three months' imprisonment by a court Mumbai, noting that being a legislator "didn't give him a license" to assault, reported the PTI.
Additional Sessions Judge Satyanarayan Navander imposed a Rs 10,000 penalty on Kadu. His sentencing has been suspended until he files an appeal in a higher court, and he was granted bail.
The court convicted Kadu under sections 353 (assaulting or using criminal force against a public servant to deter them from performing their duty) and 506 (criminal intimidation), while absolving him of the intentional insult charge, according to the PTI.
"No doubt, there can be grievances about governance or management of a particular department or even regarding conducting the examinations during the recruitment processes of the government. But that does not mean that any representative of the people would go to such an officer and attack him violently, intimidating the officer and disrupting his business," the court said, as per the PTI.
"Merely because the accused was a sitting MLA, he did not have any licence to deter a public servant by criminally intimidating him or by making an assault in his office," the judge stated, the news agency reported.
The incident occurred on September 26, 2018, when Kadu, the founder of Prahar Janshakti Party, visited the office of IAS officer Pradeep P, the then Director of the Information & Technology Department in Mumbai.
In an another incident, last year, a special court had acquitted Bachchu Kadu in a 2011 case of slapping a clerk at the Mantralaya, the state secretariat.
As per the complaint, Bachchu Kadu had assaulted a clerk working with the Public Health Department at the Mantralaya in January 2011, for allegedly demanding money from a person who had been shortlisted to be appointed as a medical officer.
The MLA slapped the employee and dragged him by holding his hand to the cabin of the personal assistant of the then health minister Suresh Shetty, the complainant said, adding that he did not have anything to do with the appointment of a doctor.
Based on the complaint filed by the victim, a case was registered at the Marine Drive police station under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 332 (preventing a public servant from discharging duty) and 353 (assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharging duty).
(with PTI inputs)
