Hotelier accuses Ganapati mandal members of damaging property and hitting his staff

Au00a0Pune hotelier has accused Rahul Dholepatil, director (operations) of Kapila Group, for ransacking his premises and brutally hitting four of his staff members.


Assaulted: Waiter who was injured. Pic/Nikhil Ghorpade

Javed Khan, owner of a popular lounge bar Elbow Room, said that Dholepatil and his men accompanied by two police constables entered his pub on Dholepatil Road around 11.45 pm on Saturday night.

"They started yelling at us and told us to shut down operations. They said women come here in miniskirts and drink, which is against our culture. Dholepatil then took a stick and started damaging my property. The constables stood aside and watched while he and his men ransacked my property and brutally assaulted my staffers," said Khan.

Javed claimed that the mob broke his fountain Pepsi machine, expensive cutlery, sofas, antique vases and lamps amounting to Rs 3 lakh.

Besides that four waiters named Nilesh Nahive, Deepak Lokhande, Ram Patra and Tilak Bahadur were brutally hit with sticks and their heads banged on the floor.
"One of them has sustained a fracture to the right hand and two of them are unable to see properly because their heads were banged on the floor by Dholepatil," alleged Javed adding that the cash box with Rs 45,000 was also missing.

Javed also alleged that when he went to lodge a complaint at Bund Garden police station, officials were not ready to take his complaint and made him wait for 20 hours before a complaint was taken.
I was not there: Dholepatil

When MiD DAY contacted Rahul Dholepatil he denied Javed's claims and said he wasn't there at the time of the incident.

"I reached there much later after hearing about some ruckus," he said.According to Dholepatil, a fight had broken out at the pub amongst a few customers.

"We run a Ganapati mandal in the area and a few of our boys heard some ruckus at the pub. They thought it to be a drunken brawl and called the police. Two constables accompanied them and when they reached there the place was already in shambles. Some customers must have fought among themselves," said Dholepatil.

He said the damage to the property was made by customers of the pub and not mandal members. However he agreed that he objected to the 'obscene' clothes worn by the women frequenting the pub.

"This is a residential area and girls come dressed in almost nothing. They drink and create scenes late at night, peeing on gates of buildings or making out in cars parked on the roads. We are running a Ganapati temple here and that's why we objected to the obscenity. But he is taking advantage of it and dragging us into this," alleged Dholepatil.

When asked about the case, Senior Police Inspector Suhas Nadgouda said that he couldn't give any information as it was a confidential case. "We are still to take in all the details of the case," said Nadgouda.
(With inputs from Preeti Agarwal)