The Nashik district police have arrested three persons for allegedly setting a 60-year-old woman on fire after she refused to vote for particular candidate recommended by them in Wednesday’s State Assembly polls.
Jebubai Wable (60), an elderly who used to live alone in Baboolgaon village Yewla taluka of Nashik district, sustained 80 per cent wounds, after the alleged miscreants set her ablaze within hours after she cast her vote in a polling station in her village. She had cast her vote for a candidate other than the one recommended by the three arrested persons.
Wable is currently undergoing treatment at a private hospital in Nashik , where her condition was described as “critical”.Identifying the three arrested persons as Ashok Paratnal, Panduraj Paratnal and Nandkishore Gorkhe, the police said that all these three were retired Army men. It is not clear as yet as to which of the political party they owe their affiliation to.
According to the police, the arrested persons used were pressuring the Wable to vote to a person of their choice in the polls. They had kept a close till she exercised her right in a local polling station. Having come to known that she had voted for some other candidate than the one recommended by them, the trio confronted her and asked her as to why she did so. Wable sought to wriggle out of the situation, by citing her poor eye sight and telling them that she had voted to another inadvertently.
Unconvinced, they doused her with kerosene and set her on her fire. The villagers rushed her initially to the Nashik district civil hospital. After the media got to know of the incident, she was shifted to a private hospital in Nashik.