The Kolhapur district and sessions court on Thursday remanded Amol Kale, a key accused in the murder of journalist Gauri Lankesh, in police custody till November 22 in the case of murder of Communist leader and writer Govind Pansare.
The Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Maharashtra police, probing Pansare’s murder, secured his custody from the Bengaluru central prison on Wednesday. Kale, along with the other accused Rajesh Bangera and Amit Digwekar, is lodged there in the Lankesh murder case.
Government prosecutor Shivajirao Rane requested the court that Kale be remanded in police custody for 14 days because the SIT’s investigation revealed his involvement in the murder of Pansare. “The SIT has gathered information on Kale’s stay in Kolhapur in November-December 2014, before the murder of Pansare (on February 16, 2015). It is necessary to determine how Kale hatched the conspiracy that led to the death of Pansare, where in Kolhapur he received training in firearms, who were his accomplices and what were his past links with the city,” Mr. Rane said.
After hearing arguments by the defence against police custody, Judge S.S. Raul remanded Kale in police custody for seven days.
Kale is also a suspect in the murder of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar. The CBI has interrogated him in the case. In September, the CBI gave the green signal to the SIT to question him in the Pansare killing.
Pansare and his wife Uma were repeatedly shot at by motorcycle-borne assailants as they returned from a morning stroll at Sagar Mal at Kolhapur. While Ms. Pansare survived the attack, her husband succumbed to wounds at Breach Candy Hospital in Mumbai on February 20.
In June this year, the Karnataka SIT, probing the Lankesh case, chanced upon a diary allegedly belonging to Kale. It allegedly contained a ‘hit-list’ of progressive and secular thinkers, who were critics of radical Hindutva ideas. The list contained the names of the relatives of Pansare and Dabholkar.
After questioning Kale in the Dabholkar case, the CBI alleged that the motorbike and the murder weapon used in the killing of the rationalist were supplied by Kale and that he was one of the key conspirators. Kale, alleged to be a former activist of the rightwing Hindu Janjagruti Samiti (HJS), was first arrested in May this year in the Pimpri-Chinchwad area of Pune by the Karnataka SIT in the Lankesh murder case. The agency suspects Kale has masterminded the murder of Dabholkar, suggesting that he and Sachin Andure, alleged to be the main shooter in the Dabholkar killing, had met in Aurangabad district and stayed in a lodge there.
In January this year, the Kolhapur sessions court granted conditional bail to radical Hindutva activist Virendra Tawde, named as the mastermind in the Dabholkar murder, in the Pansare case. According to probe agencies, Tawde is a crucial link to the murders of Pansare and Dabholkar. The SIT’s supplementary chargesheet even names Tawde as ‘mastermind’ in the Pansare murder, suspecting him of conducting the reconnaissance before the murder.
Motorcycle-borne assailants killed Dabholkar on August 20, 2013, with a 7.65-mm country pistol when he was taking his morning stroll on the Omkareshwar Bridge in Pune. Pansare and wife Uma were shot with two 7.65-mm country weapons. The same modus operandi was used in the murder of rationalist M.M. Kalburgi by two persons outside his home in Dharwad, Kanataka.