Rahul’s brother Tushar at their home in Gholapwadi

He had nothing to do with protest: Kin of man who died

PUNE: Rahul Fatangale, the man who died in Monday’s violence, had little to do with the Koregaon Bhima battle celebration or the protest that unfolded on Monday. Yet he died when a stone hit his head. Nobody knows who hurled it.Rahul (28), the second of four sons of farmer couple Babaji and Janabai , was from Gholapwadi village about 25 km away from Koregaon Bhima. He ran a small garage in Chandannagar , Kharadi in Pune and stayed in a rented house in Sanaswadi.“We have nothing to do with either the celebrations or the protests. We are Maratha. Rahul was coming home to Sanaswadi on his motorcycle early when he came to know that there was trouble and a traffic jam at Koregaon Bhima,” his youngest brother Tushar said. Tushar is preparing for Maharashtra Public Service Commission examination in Shirur.Rahul went to Chandannagar every day in the morning to run his garage in a makeshift shed. He worked there throughout the day, and also put in parttime work in a company at Yerawada to supplement the income. He would return home late in the evening, Tushar said.The local police and some residents called him using Rahul’s cellphone around 6.30pm to inform him about Rahul’s death. “I was told that Rahul was hit by a single stone on his head at Sanaswadi some distance away from where he stays in a rented house, between 4 and 4.30pm. Some local people and the police took him to a hospital from where his body was sent to Sassoon General Hospital in Pune for a postmortem,” he said.Doctors at Sassoon hospital confirmed on Tuesday that Rahul had died of head injuries.The family was handed over the body early on Tuesday and the last rites were performed at Gholapwadi around 12.30pm, cousin Navnath Fatangale said. He said Rahul was married but his wife did not stay with him.The Fatangales live in a modest house built halfway up the Janjalaidevi hill in Gholapwadi. A dusty road for one and half km leads to the house. The family owns five acres on the hill where Rahul’s two brothers and his parents do dry-land farming that does not fetch much of an income.The family’s old house in Gholapwadi crumbled some time ago and since they don’t have spare money for repairs, they moved to the two-room house adjacent to their farm and away from the village.Tushar said it was his brother’s bad luck. “ It took one stone to kill my brother. There was heavy stone pelting at Koregaon Bhima. But just that one stone thrown by someone at Sanaswadi snuffed out his life and nobody knows where it came from,” he said.Neither Tushar nor Navnath were aware that CM Devendra Fadnavis has announced a financial assistance of Rs 10 lakh for the family. “Nobody told us anything about the money. Do we have to fill some form to get it?” Tushar said when this TOI reporter told him about the announcement.