Mumbai, Dec 16: A woman was severely injured after her boyfriend, a leader of Bharatiya Janata Party Yuva Morcha (BJYM) and the son of a senior bureaucrat, allegedly tried to run her over with his car in Maharashtra Thane.
The victim has been identified as Priya Singh, a 26-year-old model and a social media influencer. She described the harrowing ordeal of how an argument resulted in her boyfriend allegedly beating her, trying to strangle her, and then asking his driver to mow her down.
The incident took place last Monday near a hotel in Thane and police have registered a case against Ashwajit Gaikwad, who is the president of BJYM, Thane division, and the son of Anil Gaikwad, Managing Director at the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation.
Priya says she received a call from Ashwajit, who she has been in a relationship with for nearly 5 years, at 4 am on Tuesday asking her to join him at a family function.
"Upon reaching there I met some friends and found that my boyfriend was behaving strangely. So I asked him if everything was fine and insisted him for us to talk in private," she said.
Priya stepped out of the function and waited for Ashwajit hoping to talk to him and defuse the tension. But he came out with his friends who started abusing her.
"My boyfriend and his friend used abusive language to which I asked my boyfriend to defend me and not abuse which led to the start of something beyond my imagination. My boyfriend slapped me, tried to strangle my neck, I tried to push him away he bit my hand, beat me, pulled my hair, and his friend out of nowhere pushed me to the ground," she wrote on her Instagram.
But it did not end there. When she tried to collect her phone and other belongings from his car, Ashwajit asked his driver to mow her down, police said.
"The incident took place around 4.30 am on Monday near a hotel on Ghodbunder Road, where the woman had gone to meet Ashwajit Gaikwad. An argument broke out between the two. Later, when the victim collected her belongings from his car and started leaving, the one who was driving the vehicle tried to mow her down, due to which she fell down and suffered serious injuries," a police official said.
Priya claims she was lying on the road, in pain, for nearly half an hour before a passerby stopped and called for help, which she had been unable to do as Ashwajit hadn't returned her phone.
She was taken to a nearby hospital where she is currently undergoing treatment.
"My right leg is broken and I had to undergo surgery, had to put a rod in my right leg. I have bruises all over my body, my arms, my back, and my stomach area are deeply scrapped. I will be bedridden for a minimum of 3-4 months and after that, I will have to take support to walk for another 6 months," Priya Singh told police in the hospital.
Following the incident, a case was registered against him and two others under sections 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 279 (rash driving), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace) and others of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
A Maharashtra police official said that a probe into the incident is underway and no arrest has been made so far.
He tells a different story
Gaikwad has, however, refuted all the allegations made by Priya Singh and also dubbed the entire incident an attempt to "extort money".
In the initial investigation, Gaikwad, told the police that he and Priya were just "friends".
"Whatever has been portrayed is untrue. She (Priya Singh) is just a friend of mine," sources quoted him as saying.
"She came in a drunken condition to a hotel where I was involved in a family function and forced me to talk to her. When I refused, she started abusing me. She also assaulted my friends when they tried to intervene in the matter. When my driver, Shelke, started my car so that she would step aside, she fell. The accident was not intentional," he said.
Gaikwad said, "This is nothing, but a way to extort money from me. I have also given her money in the past and I have all the records".
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