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 here, noting that being a legislator "didn't give him a license" to assault.
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.
"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.
"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 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.
