All the five accused are linked to the radical outfit Sanatan Sanstha, whose members have also been charged in the murders of veteran activist and Community Party of India (CPI) leader Govind Pansare in February 2015, Kannada scholar MM Kalburgi in August 2015, journalist Gauri Lankesh in September 2017. The chief examination of S R Singh, the CBI officer who investigated the murder of Dr Narendra Dabholkar, concluded on Wednesday. The defence lawyers for the accused started his cross-examination, which will continue on Thursday.
Rationalist and anti-superstition activist Dr Narendra Dabholkar was shot dead on the VR Shinde Bridge, also known as Omkareshwar Bridge, on August 20, 2013, when was out on a morning walk. After directions from the Bombay High Court in 2014, the case — which was till then investigated by Pune police — was taken up by the CBI. Singh’s chief examination by Special Public Prosecutor Prakash Suryavanshi started on Tuesday in the court of Additional Sessions Judge SR Navandar, which is a Special Court for cases under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).
During his deposition on Tuesday, Singh who retired from the CBI as superintendent in 2022, told the court about the sequence of events up to the arrest of Dr Virendrasing Tawade, an ENT surgeon and Sanatan Sanstha member, who is the prime accused in the case.
Along with Tawade, CBI has so far arrested and charged four others. Sachin Andure and Sharad Kalaskar, who have been named as shooters of Dr Dabholkar, Mumbai-based lawyer Sanjeev Punalekar and his aide Vikram Bhave have been arrested.
All the five accused are linked to the radical outfit Sanatan Sanstha, whose members have also been charged in the murders of veteran activist and Community Party of India (CPI) leader Govind Pansare in February 2015, Kannada scholar MM Kalburgi in August 2015, journalist Gauri Lankesh in September 2017.
In continuation of his chief examination, Singh told the court on Wednesday about the arrest of Sachin Andure on August 18 in 2018. He also told the court that an attendance register seized from a shop in Aurangabad, where Andure worked, showed he was absent on the day of the murder and also the day before. He also told the court that Kalaskar’s custody was taken from the Anti Terrorism Squad of Maharashtra, which was probing him for the Nalasopara Arms haul case. Both Andure and Kalaskar, he said, were subjected to psychological analysis at the Central Forensic Sciences Laboratory in Mumbai and the reports of these tests were obtained.
The reconstruction of the entire sequence of events of the day of the crime was done in presence of Andure and Kalaskar separately, Singh told the court. He also explained the sequence to the court till the arrest of Punalekar and Bhave in 2019 and also the two supplementary chargesheets filed against Andure and Kalaskar in February 2019 and Punalekar and Bhave in November 2019.