Ulhasnagar firing incident: 10 days on, Mahesh Gaikwad stable, out of ICU

In the other shooting that shook the city, Shinde faction leader still has some difficulty breathing

Doctors at Jupiter Hospital, where Shiv Sena (Eknath Shinde) leader Mahesh Gaikwad and Senior Inspector Rahul Patil are being treated, told mid-day that both are now in stable condition. The former, however, is still struggling to breathe. The politician and police officer were allegedly shot by BJP MLA Ganpat Gaikwad on February 2.

At Jupiter Hospital, Mahesh Gaikwad is being taken care of by his brother, Avinash, who runs the Shree Datt Multispeciality Hospital in Kalyan. The facility is close to Mahesh Gaikwad’s office and 6 km away from the police station where the incident happened. Avinash mid-day, “We do not know how long it will take for my brother to recover.”

CCTV footage in which BJP MLA Ganpat Gaikwad can be seen with a gun inside the Hill Line police station

Asked why he chose to bring his brother to a hospital 22 km away from the place of the incident, rather than to his own facility or a government-run hospital, he said, “This is a big hospital.” Dr Shilpa Tatke, the hospital’s spokesperson, said, “Both patients were looked after by an intensivist. They are stable and have been moved out of the ICU.”

She added that a general surgeon and an orthopaedic surgeon are still monitoring the patients closely. The two are expected to be discharged in a couple of days. This was the first case of gun violence this month that shook Mumbai and its neighbouring area. The second was the fatal attack on Abhishek Ghosalkar, a former corporator of the Shiv Sena (UBT). That incident was live-streamed on Facebook on February 8 and the perpetrator was a local aspiring politician Mauris Noronha, who shot himself to death soon after. The police suspect he did the act out of a personal vendetta against Ghosalkar.

“I do not know why my brother was shot,” said Avinash, even though the rivalry between his brother and Ganpat Gaikwad, who is reportedly their distant cousin, is well-known. “Chief Minister Eknath Shinde has been in touch with the family and took timely updates after the incident. But I am far away from politics,” he said, as he took a few members of a Shinde faction shakha to see Mahesh Gaikwad.

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