Mumbai: The sessions court on Saturday granted conditional anticipatory bail to Shiv Sena’s newly appointed Thane district chief Kedar Dighe, who has been booked by the Mumbai Police in a rape and criminal intimidation case.
Additional Sessions judge M M Deshpande granted anticipatory bail to Dighe on condition that he co-operates with the investigation.
The N M Joshi Marg police on August 2 registered a case against Dighe, 42, based on a complaint by a 23-year-old-woman. Dighe had filed for anticipatory bail on Thursday.
Apart from Dighe, the police had also booked one Rohit Kapoor, a resident of Delhi, who works as a captain of a ship in Singapore.
According to the complainant, Kapoor called her to his room on the pretext of taking club membership and then allegedly raped her. The next day he offered her money when she refused to take the same, Dighe threatened her.
Dighe’s role was mainly related to threatening the victim, as per the allegations. The FIR was registered under section 376 for rape and 506 (2) of IPC for criminal intimidation.
The police had sent a summons to Dighe on Thursday after which he approached the Sessions Court for pre-arrest bail.
On July 31, Uddhav Thackeray appointed Kedar Dighe — the nephew of the late Thane unit chief Anand Dighe who died in 2001 — as the new unit head of the district. Anita Birje was appointed as his deputy.
Born and brought up in Thane, Kedar runs a hospitality start-up called BGourmet. He also runs a non-government organisation, Dharmaveer Anand Dighe Yuva Pratishthan, which works for rural development.