Achi news desk-
Pune6 hours agoAuthor: Ashish Rai
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On 20 August 2013, Dabholkar was shot dead in Pune.
The court’s verdict on Friday (May 10) came after 11 years in the murder case of Maharashtra Anti-Superstition Committee chief Narendra Dabholkar. Additional Sessions Judge PP Jadhav of the CBI Special Court in Pune convicted accused Sachin Andure and Sharad Kalaskar. The court has sentenced both to life imprisonment.
A total of 5 were charged in the murder case. Among these, Dr Virendra Singh Tawde, Vikram Bhave and Sanjeev Punalekar were acquitted due to lack of evidence. Among them, Tawde, Andure and Kalaskar are in jail, while Punalekar and Bhave are on bail.
On August 20, 2013, Dabholkar was shot dead by two bike-borne criminals on the Maharshi Vitthal Ramji Bridge in Pune. Virendra Tawde was charged with conspiracy to murder Dabholkar. He was considered the master of the murder.
Sachin Andure and Sharad Kalaskar have been found guilty in the Narendra Dabholkar murder case.
After Dabolkar, 3 more murders took place in the next 4 years.
After Dabholkar’s murder, three more activists were murdered in the next four years. In February 2015, communist leader Govind Pansare and in August of the same year, Canadian scholar and writer MM Kalburgi were shot dead in Kolhapur.
After this, in September 2017, journalist Gauri Lankesh was shot dead outside her house in Bengaluru. The CBI suspected that Dabholkar and the criminals involved in the other three murders were linked to each other.
On August 20, 2013, Dabholkar was shot dead while out for a morning walk on Pune’s Maharishi Vittal Ramji bridge.
in 2016 The first arrest was made in the Dabholkar case
The Pune police had conducted the initial investigation into the Dabholkar murder case. In 2014, the Bombay High Court ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to investigate. The CBI made the first arrest in the case on June 10, 2016, arresting ENT surgeon Dr Virendra Singh Tawde.
Tawde was earlier arrested in the Pansare murder case in 2015. CBI had said in 2016 that the same bike and weapon had been used in the murders of Dabholkar and Pansare.
Virendra Tawde was associated with the right-wing Hindu organization Sanatan Sanstha. This movement opposed the work of Dabholkar’s organization, Maharashtra Andhashradha Nirmoolan Samiti. The CBI alleged that Tawde had conspired to murder Dabholkar.
In 2018, CBI nabbed the two shooters In its charge sheet filed on 6 September 2016, CBI named two fugitive members of Sanatan Sanstha, Sarang Akolkar and Vinay Pawar as the shooters. However, in August 2018, the CBI arrested Sachin Andure and Sharad Kalaskar for shooting Dabholkar.
Because of this the CBI investigation became controversial. Virendra Ichalkaranjikar, a lawyer representing the accused, had questioned the negligence of the CBI in its investigation into the identity of the shooters.
Maharashtra ATS arrested Kalaskar with weapons during a raid in Nalasopara in 2018. During interrogation, Kalaskar confessed to his crime. After this, Sachin Andure from Aurangabad was arrested.
CBI filed a chargesheet against Kalaskar and Andure on 13 February 2019. Kalaskar and Andure were said to have shot Dabholkar. Amol Kale, the prime accused in the Gauri Lankesh murder case, had provided Andure with a pistol and two-wheelers for the attack.
CBI arrested two more accused in 2019
On May 26, 2019, the investigating agency arrested Sanatan Dharma lawyer Sanjeev Punalekar and his partner Vikram Bhave. Both were accused of supporting the conspirators. In this way, 5 accused in Dabholkar case were arrested.
Punalekar had advised Kalaskar to get rid of the pistol used in the murder. Kalaskar had thrown the pistol in a creek in Thane. Bhave had led the area for the snipers. Punalekar was released on bail on 5 July 2019.
The accused were booked under IPC sections 120B (conspiracy), 302 (murder), relevant sections of the Arms Act and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act or section 16 of the UAPA (punishment for terrorist activities). The Pune Sessions Court had framed charges against all the five accused on September 15, 2021.
