18 December,2016 08:37 AM IST | | Faisal Tandel
Pranav Dhanawade, a 17-year-old cricket star who scripted history with an unbeaten knock of 1009 in January this year, was asked to leave the Subash Maidan in Kalyan, so helipad could be prepped for minister
Pranav Dhanawade
Pranav Dhanawade
Pranav Dhanawade, a 17-year-old cricket star who scripted history with an unbeaten knock of 1009 in January this year, was asked to leave the Subash Maidan in Kalyan on Saturday evening by officials from the Bazarpeth police station. The reason he was moved out was to prepare the ground for the construction of a helipad, which was being made for Prakash Javadekar, the minister of human resource development, who is to visit on Sunday.
Pranav practices daily at the ground with other players. He said that despite the Kalyan Dombivli Municipal Corporation's assurance that the ground was available for practice, it was not so. Dhanavade is the son of an autorickshaw driver, who got an opportunity to train and play alongside senior Indian cricketers like Yuvraj Singh and Robin Uthappa, among other members of the Air India team.
Dhanavade told mid-day that the incident took place between 6 pm and 6:30 pm. "We were doing stretching exercises when they came and started pushing us around. An officer held my collar and forced me into the police van," he said. Various political party members gathered at the police station and protested over the behaviour of the police. The Bazarpeth police claim that they were just following security protocol, as the minister has Z-security.
"The permission for the helipad is from the tehsildar's office. When senior police officers reached there, he kept asking them to show him the order. They then asked him to sit in the van so he could be taken to the police station to see the documents. He was not abused," said Dilip Suryavanshi, senior police inspector.
