Sanjay Raut, a senior leader of the Shiv Sena Uddhav Thackeray faction and one of the former chief minister’s closest aides, said he lost 10 kg during his stay in jail. Speaking to NDTV days after he was granted bail by a special court in a money laundering case, Raut said he was kept in an ‘Anda Cell’ where he did not see sunlight for 15 days. Raut said that because of that, he had got an eye problem.
Calling himself a ‘prisoner of war’, Raut claimed that he would not have been arrested if he had surrendered to them (BJP) or “remained a mute spectator”.
“I call myself a prisoner of war because the government thinks we are at war with them,” Raut said. He said that he saw former Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh in jail, and his health is not good there. Anil Deshmukh is in jail for abuse of power and an alleged corruption case. He questioned whether the government would arrest only those in the opposition.
Expressing his gratitude to the Thackeray family, Sanjay Raut said, ‘Whatever I am, I am because of Balasaheb Thackeray and the Thackeray family.’ On leaders joining party rebels except for Uddhav Thackeray and now Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, he said, “Those who want to leave the party can go; it will survive and keep growing”. He claimed that the state’s people are with his party, and only the MLAs and leaders are going for their benefit.
“Those who have left, someone else is controlling them… There is only one Shiv Sena in Maharashtra,” he said, alleging that some people tried to finish the Shiv Sena. He said that if BJP had contested the by-election of Andheri East, we would have won from them by a margin of more than one lakh votes.
