In a huge loss of face, Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Nitesh Rane — son of Union MSME Minister Narayan Rane — surrendered before a Sindhudurg Court, here on Wednesday afternoon.

The development came hours after his lawyer Satish Maneshinde said that Nitesh Rane’s bail application before the Bombay High Court was withdrawn with a statement that he would give himself up to the Sindhudurg Police.

Soon afterwards, Nitesh Rane said at his home in Kankavali, that he was shortly proceeding to surrender before the court and slammed the Maha Vikas Aghadi government for allegedly trying to arrest him illegally.

“The bail application is withdrawn with a statement that the applicant (Nitesh) Rane is surrendering before the Investigating Officer (IO), even though 5 more days of protection by the Supreme Court are left, as he wants to face the investigation,” Maneshinde added.

The surrender came – amid tight security – a day after Sindhudurg Court Additional Sessions Judge R.M. Rote rejected Nitesh Rane’s bail application citing various grounds and saying his custodial interrogation was necessary.

Observing that Rane was not “falsely implicated due to political reasons”, Judge Rote said the he is the ‘main accused’ and his prima facie involvement has been shown, a conspiracy was hatched to teach (Santosh M. Parab, complainant) a lesson, and hence his “custodial interrogation” was necessary for proper and effective investigation.

Rane Jr is charged with the alleged Dec 18, 2021 attack on a Shiv Sena activist Santosh M. Parab while campaigning for the Sindhudurg District Cooperative Bank polls though the BJP leader has consistently denied any involvement.

According to Parab’s police complaint, when he was returning home that evening, his motorcyle was hit by a SUV without number plates, one person stepped out and assaulted him with a paperknife.

Later, the assailant allegedly was overheard saying that Gotya Sawant and Nitesh Rane should be informed of (this) incident, called up someone and sped off in the SUV.

The police subsequently arrested 6 accused – Chetan Pawar, Karan B. Kamble, Anil Nakka, Karan D. Kamble, Deepak N. Waghode and Sachin Satpute – all from Pune, while two other accused Dnyaneshwar D. Devnur and Dheeraj Jadhav are still absconding.

As per the probe, Karan B. Kamble revealed the weapons used in the offence which were recovered and the attack was commissioned by Devnur and Jadhav for Rs 150,000 of which they were paid Rs 20,000.

The probe revealed that Satpute and Nitesh Rane had hatched the conspiracy on Aug 28 last year with the latter wanting to teach Parab a lesson for targeting the Rane family.

Remaining ‘incommunicado’ for several days earlier, Nitesh Rane reacted to today’s fast-paced happenings by posting a picture showing how Amit Shah was arrested by the CBI in 2010 when P. Chidambaram was the union home minister, and in 2019 the CBI arrested Chidambaram when Shah is (currently) the Union Home Minister.

Alongside is a telling caption: “Time is Powerful, Humans are unnecessarily arrogant.”