On 18th November 2022, Pune police booked two Congress workers for vandalising Veer Savarkar’s statue near Sarasbaug in the Swargate area of the city. Pune police also detained 15 BJP workers for protesting against Rahul Gandhi at the Congress office in the city.
The senior inspector Ashok Indulkar of the Swargate police station said that Congress workers were booked under sections 188, 504, and 153 of the Indian Penal Code for vandalising Savarkar’s statue. These workers raised a banner reading “Maafiveer (mercy seeker) Savarkar” near the Savarkar statue in Sarasbaug.
It was learned that the flex was installed by the Maharashtra Pradesh Youth Congress. It was planted around 1.30 pm on Thursday. It contained documents cited by Rahul Gandhi while his broadsides against the freedom fighter.
The politics in the state seems to be heating up as Rahul Gandhi trained guns at Veer Savarkar during his Bharat Jodo Yatra which reached the Akola district of Maharashtra this week. Many followers of Savarkar demonstrated against the Gandhi scion for his remarks on Savarkar.
In an effort to protest Rahul Gandhi’s comments on late Hindutva philosopher V D Savarkar, a number of BJP demonstrators stormed the Congress’s office in Pune on Friday. They tried to blacken pictures of the party leader. The demonstrators shouted anti-Rahul Gandhi slogans and tacked up posters reading “Mafiveer (mercy seeker) Jawaharlal Nehru” on the Congress Bhavan walls, according to a police officer in the Shivajinagar police station. Inspector Arvind Mane said, “We detained 10 to 15 workers from the premises of Congress Bhavan.”
The Congress scion had gone on a vitriolic tirade against Veer Savarkar during the Maharashtra leg of his ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra.’ On Tuesday (November 15), Rahul Gandhi claimed that the freedom fighter took a pension from the British government to work against the Indian National Congress (INC).
Again on Thursday (November 17), he reiterated that Veer Savarkar helped the British government and wrote mercy petitions “out of fear”. Rahul Gandhi also accused the Indian freedom fighter of betraying the likes of Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel, and Mahatma Gandhi.