Following days of manhunt, the Pune police nabbed IAS trainee Puja Khedkar’s mother Manorama Khedkar from a hotel in Mahad on Thursday. Manorama Khedkar was at large after police booked her following a video showing her threatening farmers with a pistol.
Pankaj Deshmukh, SP, Pune Rural Police said, “We have detained her from Mahad. She was found in a hotel there. We will question her and take further legal action.” She will be placed under arrest after the completion of formalities, he added.
Multiple teams had been formed to trace Manorama, her husband and five others accused in the case. The Paud police in Pune rural have booked the Khedkar couple and five others under the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita (BNS) sections, including 323 (dishonest or fraudulent removal or concealment of property), and relevant provisions of the Arms Act.
The two-minute video shows Manorama Khedkar brandishing a pistol to threaten a group of farmers, yelling at a man over what appeared to be a land dispute. She, however, conceals the pistol on realising that she is being recorded.
Manorama is heard in the video yelling at a man in Marathi, asking him to show her "satbara" (land documents). He replies that his name is on the land document and the case is in court. She then asks to see the court order and warns the man not to "teach me the rules".
Police had launched a search for Manorama and her husband Dilip Khedkar after a video surfaced showing her allegedly threatening some persons with a gun over a land dispute at Dhadwali village in Pune's Mulshi tehsil.
-with inputs from agencies.
