Police retrieve R.G. Gadkari bust

The bust was uprooted and flung into the river by four activists of the Sambhaji Brigade on Tuesday.

Members of Brahman Mahasangh place a portrait of R.G. Gadkari at the spot in Sambhaji Park from where his bust was removed. —

The city police said they have retrieved the vandalised bust of Marathi writer Ram Ganesh Gadkari from a stretch of the Mula-Mutha river on Wednesday evening.

The bust was uprooted and flung into the river by four activists of the Sambhaji Brigade in the wee hours of Tuesday. The Brigade claimed that the renowned poet and playwright had negatively portrayed king Sambhaji, the eldest son of Chhatrapati Shivaji, as an alcoholic and womaniser in his early 20th century magnum-opus play Raj-Sanyas .

Deccan police sources said they found the bust at the spot of the riverbed where the accused claimed to have thrown it.

Gadkari’s bust, kept in the heart of the city’s Sambhaji Park, was a gift by the Ram Ganesh Gadkari Memorial Committee to the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), and was inaugurated by another doyen of Marathi literature, Prahlad Keshav Atre, in 1962.

The accused, Harshavardhan Magdum, Pradeep Kanse, Swapnil Kale and Ganesh Karle have been remanded to police custody till January 6.

With civic polls inching closer, the incident has lent a political colour to the proceedings with observers remarking that the act is a deliberate effort on part of the Brigade to rally together the Maratha community.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and its coalition ally Shiv Sena have condemned the incident saying that the move was a deliberate attempt to divide society along caste lines.

Pune Mayor Prashant Jagtap has said that the PMC would reinstall Gadkari’s bust, which in turn has provoked a warning from the Brigade, that it would continue with its crusade of installing a statue of king Sambhaji in its place.