Days after he resigned as vice-president, Jagdeep Dhankhar may have gone missing, Shiv Sena (UBT) spokesperson Sanjay Raut said on Sunday, adding that his party was considering filing a habeas corpus petition regarding Dhankhar.
”On July 21, we met him in the morning in Rajya Sabha and even held a discussion with him. He gave some directions in the Rajya Sabha, after which it was adjourned. He was in good health. He might have been angry with the members but even joked… However, after 6 in the evening, the media carried the news that Jagdeep Dhankhar had resigned. We were shocked,” said Raut while speaking to The Indian Express.
Raut said it’s still not known where Dhankhar is. ”We don’t know where he is. We don’t know how his health is. We don’t know whether he is missing… We don’t know with whom he is. We also suspect whether he has been kept in isolation. No one has any clue where he is. If a former vice-president of this country suddenly disappears without a clue, it raises serious questions about our democracy,” the Rajya Sabha member said.
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When Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray visited Delhi, senior advocate Kapil Sibal met him, Raut said. ”He also raised the point as to where Jagdeep Dhankhar is. He told us about the habeas corpus petition, which is filed if a person is missing so that he can be produced before the court. We are thinking of filing such a petition in the court,” he added.
Raut said the practice of making leaders one dislikes disappear or taking some kind of revenge against them was prevalent in Russia and China. ”It looks like the current rulers have started the same practice…If this kind of practice has started in India, then Rahul Gandhi and his associates should remain alert. Even ‘Bhishma Pitam’’ like Lal Krishna Advani was treated in a similar manner,” he said.
In his weekly column in the Saamana daily of the Sena (UBT), Raut wrote that Dhankhar had been ”missing” for the past few days. ”We realised that Dhankhar has been missing for several days now after some MPs tried to contact him. However, he seems to have become invisible. Even Kapil Sibal tried to contact him but could not do so. We suspect that Dhankhar is under house arrest. Even his relatives have not been allowed to contact him.”
Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades.
Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives.
Manoj More’s campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees.
During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded….The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa.
Manoj More has also covered the “Latur drought” situation in 2015 when a “Latur water train” created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died.
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