Maharashtra Man Arrested Over Journalist's Death Allegedly Tried To Kill Activist

A land dealer accused of mowing down a journalist in Maharashtra's Ratnagiri district also faces four more criminal cases, including one in which he allegedly tried to run over an anti-refinery activist, a police official said on Friday.

Local activists who are protesting against a proposed refinery near Rajapur in the coastal Ratnagiri district claimed that had the police acted sternly in the earlier cases, the latest incident could have been avoided.

Journalist Shashikant Warishe (48) was seriously injured on Monday when an SUV allegedly driven by Pandharinath Amberkar hit his two-wheeler near a petrol pump at Rajapur, some 440 km from Mumbai.

Warishe died in hospital the next day. An article written by Warishe against Amberkar had appeared in a local Marathi newspaper on the morning of the incident.

It has been alleged that Amberkar, now arrested and booked for murder, used to threaten any person who opposed land acquisition for a proposed refinery in the area.

In April 2020, Warishe's SUV had allegedly hit the two-wheeler of activist Manoj Mayekar in Nate area of the district. Mayekar spent two weeks in hospital due to the injuries, said a police official.

Mayekar was among activists opposed to Barsu refinery project.

An FIR was registered against Amberkar after the incident and a trial is now underway. However, there was no allegation then that it had anything to do with Mayekar's opposition to the proposed refinery, the police official said.

Of the other three previous cases against Amberkar, two were of assault and rioting while a third one was about violation of COVID-related norms, he said. He was convicted in the COVID-19-related case.

Activists of the Barsu-Solgaon Panchakroshi Refinery Virodhi Sanghatna on Friday claimed that Amberkar and his aides had attacked them near the Rajapur court last year because of their opposition to the refinery project.

Narendra Joshi, secretary of the organisation, told PTI that the incident occurred on September 12, 2022. An FIR was registered in the case.

"If local police had taken the offence seriously and had initiated stern action against Amberkar, he would not have dared commit another serious offence and Warishe would have been alive," Joshi said.

Warishe wrote regularly against the refinery project, he added.

Meanwhile, in Mumbai, journalists staged a protest over Warishe's murder near the Mantralaya, and demanded that the case be fast-tracked. They also demanded that the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organized Crime Act be invoked in the case.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)