Tejas Navale
Pune, May 12, 2025: A few days ago, the Pune police had arrested Shantanu Kukde, a former vice president of the minority wing of the Nationalist Congress Party (Ajit Pawar), on accusation of raping a woman. In that case, police found evidence of a financial transaction between the accused, Shantanu Kukde, and Deepak Mankar, the Pune city president of the NCP (Ajit Pawar group).
In this case, a shocking update has come to light. After police found evidence of financial transactions between Mankar and Kukde, the police had asked Mankar to submit original papers regarding the case. However, the police investigation has found that the papers submitted by Mankar to the police were fake. Following the revelation, a case of fraud has been registered against Deepak Mankar at the Samarth police station.
Mankar is widely known for his political closeness to the Deputy Chief Minister and the Guardian Minister of Pune city, Ajit Pawar. Therefore, a complaint against Ajit Pawar’s close associate has caused a stir in the political circles of Pune city.
Shantanu Kukde was accused of rape by a woman a few days ago. After that, a complaint was lodged against Kukde. Kukde was a member of the then-united NCP. However, after reports of Kukde’s involvement in the crime came to light, the city unit of the NCP (Ajit Pawar) distanced itself from Kukde and claimed that he was no longer a member of the party.
However, a shocking twist came in this case after the police found evidence of financial transactions between Kukde and NCP’s Pune city president Deepak Mankar. Earlier, Mankar claimed that the transactions between him and Kukde were related to formal land purchases between them and dismissed the allegations against him of co-operating with Kukde. He had also submitted papers in this case to the Pune police.
But, during the investigation, the police found papers submitted by Mankar to be fake. Accordingly, they registered a case against him at Samarth Police Station. So far, Mankar has not given any comment to the latest incident.
