A special court in Pune, Maharashtra is expected to announce the verdict on Friday in the murder case of Dr Narendra Dabholkar, an anti-superstition campaigner. Dabholkar was shot dead while on his morning walk on the Omkareshwar Bridge on August 20, 2013.
Five people have been accused in the case. Additional Sessions Judge, A A Jadhav of the special court for cases under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act will give the verdict on Friday, according to Special Public Prosecutor, Prakash Suryawanshi.
The prosecution examined 20 witnesses while the defence examined two witnesses during the trial. The accused were against Dabholkar’s campaign against superstition, the prosecution had stated.
Initially, Pune police investigated the case. However, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) took over the case in 2014 after a Bombay High Court order and arrested Dr Virendrasinh Tawade, an ENT surgeon associated with the Hindu right-wing organisation Sanatan Sanstha, in June 2016.
Tawade was one of the masterminds of the murder, according to the prosecution. The CBI first identified fugitives Sarang Akolkar and Vinay Pawar as the shooters in their charge sheet. Later, they arrested Sachin Andure and Sharad Kalaskar and claimed that they had shot Dabholkar.
The central agency also arrested advocate Sanjeev Punalekar and Vikram Bhave as alleged co-conspirators. During the trial, advocate Virendra Ichalkaranjikar, one of the defence lawyers, had questioned the CBI’s flip-flop over the shooters’ identity. The accused were booked under Indian Penal Code sections 120 B (conspiracy), 302 (murder), relevant sections of the Arms Act, and section 16 (Punishment for terrorist act) of the UAPA.
While Tawade, Andure, and Kalaskar are in jail, Punalekar and Bhave are out on bail.
Dabholkar’s murder was followed by the murders of three other rationalists/activists in the next four years: communist leader Govind Pansare (Kolhapur, February 2015), Kannada scholar, and writer M M Kalburgi (Dharwad, August 2015), and journalist Gauri Lankesh (Bengaluru, September 2017).
It was suspected that the culprits in these four cases were linked to each other.
