In a sad commentary on the functioning of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), a Pune court on Friday granted bail to the three accused in the Narendra Dabholkar murder case, after the CBI failed to file a supplementary charge-sheet in the case within the stipulated 90 days.
Pune’s First Class Judicial Magistrate SMA Sayyed granted bail to accused Amol Kale, Rajesh Bangera and Amit Degvekar, after the CBI failed to file the chargesheet against them within the stipulated 90 days after their arrest.
The relief to three accused came a day after they moved the court for bail on the ground that the CBI had not sought additional time from the court to file the supplementary charge-sheet under section 43 of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).
Kale, Bangera and Degvekar are also accused in the journalist Gauri Lankesh murder case. The CBI had arrested Bangera and Degvekar on September 1, while Kale was arrested on September 3. The CBI had in the first week of September obtained the custody of Kale, Bangera and Degvekar from the Katnataka’s Special Investigation Team (SIT) investigate their links with the Dabholkar murder case.
The contention of the three accused was that neither the chargesheet was filed under IPC nor did the CBI seek additional time from the court to file the supplementary charge-sheet under UAPA.
At Friday’s hearing, a request was made on behalf the CBI that the probe agency be given time till December 20 to file the chargesheet on the ground that its officials were pre-occupied with some other work in Delhi, the CBI. However, Magistrate Sayyed rejected the CBI’s request on the ground that it should have filed the chargesheet on Wednesday when the 90-day deadline expired.
However, there have been many occasions in the past when the Bombay High Court had pulled up the CBI for the inordinate delay in completing investigations in the Narendra Dabholkar murder case.
The Supreme Court had said on Tuesday that if there was a “common thread” among the murders of social activists Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare, journalist Gauri Lankesh and rationalist M M Kalburgi, then one agency could investigate all the four cases.
Sixty nine-year-old anti-superstition campaigner Dabholkar was shot dead him from a point blank range by two motor-bicycle riding gunmen — aged between 25 and 30 years, while he was taking a morning walk on the Omkareshwar bridge located in the heart of Pune, on August 20, 2013.
Gauri Lankesh (55) was shot gunned down outside her Bengaluru residence on September 5, 2017. She was the editor in Lankesh Patrike, a Kannada weekly started by her late father P. Lankesh. After Lankesh’s death, Gauri used to her own weekly called Gauri Lankesh Patrike.
With the State police having failed to make any headway in the investigations into the Dabholkar murder case, the Bombay High Court had transferred the case to the CBI on May 9, 2014, after overruling the objections raised by the Maharashtra Government. The CBI had registered a case on June 2, 2014, on the high court’s orders.
It was the Karnataka SIT that arrested Kale, Bangera and Degvekar first in connection with the Dabholkar murder case. The CBI, which is helped by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) in the investigations, has a strong reason to believe that the same pistol was used by the miscreants in killing both Dabholkar and Gauri Lankesh.
While Kale is former Pune unit convenor of Hindu Janajagruti Samiti, an affiliate outfit of Sanathan Sanstha, Digvekar was a promter of Sanatan Sanstha’s publication the Sanatan Prabhat. Bangera allegedly trained two sharp shooters Sachin Andhure and Sharad Kalaskar in handling the pistol.
The investigations by the CBI have revealed that that it was Kalaskar who had accompanied Andhure in a motorcycle and that it was the latter who allegedly shot Dabholkar.
It may be recalled that on September 7 2016, the CBI had filed a charge-sheet in the Dabholkar murder case before a First Class Judicial Magistrate in Pune. In the charge-sheet filed against Dr Virendrasinh Tawde, an activist of Sanatan Sanstha, the CBI had also named Sarang Akolkar and Vinay Pawar as absconding accused
Tawde, who was arrested from the Sanstha’s ashram at Panvel in Raigad district on June 10, 2016, has been charged under sections under 129 (b) and 302 (murder) of Indian Penal Code. Tawde is currently lodged at Yerwada Central Jail, Pune.