A local court in Kolhapur on Monday remanded Sanatan Sanstha sympathiser Sharad Kalaskar, named by agencies as one of the shooters of rationalist Dr. Narendra Dabholkar, to judicial custody till July 8 in connection with the 2015 murder of senior Communist leader and writer Govind Pansare.
Earlier on Monday, Mr. Kalaskar was produced by Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Maharashtra police probing the crime in the court of Judge S.S. Raul on expiry of his police custody.
The judge immediately directed him to be remanded to magisterial custody, following which the accused was shifted to Mumbai’s Arthur Road Jail.
Meanwhile, sources in the SIT have said that Mr. Kalaskar, during his interrogation, had allegedly confessed to the involvement of two other persons in the case, both of whom are believed to be locals of Kolhapur.
The SIT has further hinted that it would soon be arresting these two accomplices.
The investigation team had first secured Mr. Kalaskar’s custody on June 11 from the Mumbai Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) to probe his precise role in the conspiracy hatched in Belagavi and Kolhapur to murder Mr. Pansare.
The police had secured a further seven-day extension of his custody from the court on June 18 on grounds that the SIT had uncovered “vital information regarding his involvement in the crime”.
During this 14-day period, the SIT had conducted searches at Mr. Kalaskar’s home in Kesapuri village in Aurangabad and retrieved a mobile phone and a diary.
The SIT has alleged that Mr. Kalaskar was tasked with destroying the murder weapon used to kill Mr. Pansare and that he, along with other suspects, had obtained instruction in firearms in neighbouring Belagavi in Karnataka district.
The Mumbai ATS had first arrested Mr.Kalaskar along with fringe right -wing activist Vaibhav Raut from Nallasopara in Mumbai, and Sudhanwa Gondhalekar from Pune on August 10 last year for allegedly planning disruptive activities in several parts of the State.
Probe agencies have alleged that Mr. Kalaskar was an expert in arms manufacturing and was part of the wider conspiracy that links the murders of other rationalist-activists like Mr. Pansare and journalist Gauri Lankesh, who was shot dead in Bengaluru.
Mr. Pansare, along with his wife Uma, were repeatedly shot at close range by motorcycle-borne assailants while they were returning from a morning stroll in Kolhapur’s Sagar Mal locality in February 2015.
While Ms. Pansare survived the murderous attack with serious injuries, her husband succumbed to his wounds in Mumbai’s Breach Candy Hospital on February 20 that year.