Indian Minister Narayan Rane Arrested After Claiming He Would Have 'Slapped' Maharashtra Chief

After a controversial statement by federal minister Narayan Rane, party workers from Maharashtra's ruling Shiv Sena put up several posters in Mumbai and other parts of the state calling the BJP leader a "kombdi chor" (chicken stealer) in reference to the poultry shop he ran in Chembur five decades ago, during his initial stint with Shiv Sena.

Indian Cabinet Minister Narayan Rane has been arrested by Ratnagiri police after he said he would have slapped Maharashtra Chief Uddhav Thackeray. As per media reports, police officials went to Rane's camp in Sangameshwar in Ratnagiri when he was en route to his party event in the Konkan region and arrested him.

A video purportedly depicting the arrest has emerged on Twitter.

BJP claims @MeNarayanRane detained while he was having his lunch. pic.twitter.com/qjWfOoc6PC

— Utkarsh Singh (@utkarshs88) August 24, 2021

Meanwhile, Narayan Rane's lawyer Aniket Nikam said he is planning to seek an urgent hearing before the Bombay High Court to challenge the arrest. 

​Rane's aide Pramod Jathar later told the media that no arrest warrant had been issued and that the police said they were under "pressure" to arrest the minister.

What Happened?

The federal minister triggered a controversy on Monday by stating that Thackeray forgot the year of independence during his August 15th address and if he had been present, he would have "slapped him".

"It is shameful that the chief minister does not know the year of independence. He leaned back to inquire about the count of years of independence during his speech. Had I been there, I would have given [him] a tight slap", Rane said during his public rally in the adjacent district of Raigad on Monday.

Shiv Sena secretary and MP Vinayak Raut wrote a letter to India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi demanding that he remove minister Narayan Rane from the Union Cabinet. 

"The language and the remarks of Narayan Rane against [the] Maharashtra chief are not justified. A politician like him who does not know his limits has no place in the Union Cabinet. I request you to seek Rane's resignation and oust him from the central government", Raut wrote in the letter. 

— VinayakRaut_Official (@Vinayakrauts) August 24, 2021

Party workers from Maharashtra's ruling Shiv Sena and its youth outfit Yuva Sena have, meanwhile, launched a protest across the state. Some party workers hurled stones at a BJP office in Nashik and a few others gathered outside Rane's Juhu residence in Mumbai to chant slogans against him.

— Saahil Nagi (@Saahil_Nagi) August 24, 2021

In Chiplun, where Rane has been addressing multiple Jan Ashirvad Yatra events organised by the BJP, Shiv Sena workers tore down his posters and said that they would not allow him to hold any programmes.

BJP President in Maharashtra Chandrakant Patil has since distanced himself from Narayan Rane's remarks. "I am not defending his comments, but I will also not express regret", Patil told a regional news channel.