Mumbai: A local court in Maharashtra capital Mumbai has granted bail to a man accused of issuing death threats to NCP supremo Sharad Pawar for lack of evidence, officials said. It is learnt that Sagar Barve, 34, a resident of Pune who works in a software company, was granted bail by the Magistrate Court of Mumbai.
Barve was arrested by the Mumbai Police on Jun. 10, a day after NCP supremo Sharad Pawar alleged that he had received death threats. The threats were issued by a social media user named Narmadabai Patwardhan's Facebook account. Pawar claimed that Barve, who operated the said account, had issued the threats.
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However, Dhrutiman Joshi, the lawyer representing Barve argued that there was no strong evidence against Barve in the case. The lawyer said that Pawar's lawyer had failed to prove that the Facebook account from which the death threat was issued was operated by Barve. Joshi further argued that Barve had no past criminal record and was arrested by the Mumbai Police “without proper adherence to due process”, such as serving him with a summons.
The court accepted the argument and granted conditional bail to Barve for lack of evidence. Pertinently, the social media user had threatened Pawar that he will meet the same fate as anti-superstition intellectual Narendra Dabholkar. Dabholkar was shot dead in Pune on August 20, 2013. Following the death threat to Sharad Pawar, his daughter and NCP leader Supriya Sule had filed a complaint with Mumbai Police Commissioner Vivek Hanchalkar.
Following the complaint, the accused Sagar Barve was arrested by the Mumbai police.
