The CBI has filed a supplementary chargesheet in the Satish Shetty murder case against two former police officials — the then inspector and sub-inspector working with the local Crime Branch
(lCB) — for allegedly conspiring with the perpetrators in the crime and creating false evidence in the case.
In a supplementary chargesheet before the Court of Additional Sessions Judge, Pune, the CBI booked former police inspector BR Andhalkar and former Assistant Police Inspector (API) Namdev Kauthale under Section 120-B of IPC read with Sections 193, 201, 211 and 218 of IPC (sections relating with false evidence, disappearance of evidence, framing false charges and recording incorrect information) in connection with noted RTI activist Satish Shetty.
Shetty, who had made a mark for himself as an RTI activist by exposing corrupt land deals at lonavla and Pimpri-Chinchwad near Pune, was stabbed to death by some unidentified assailants while he was taking a walk on the morning of January 13, 2010.
The CBI had arrested Andhalkar on April 6 this year while Kauthale was arrested five days later. Currently, both are currently behind the bars.
Andhalkar was arrested after it emerged during the investigations that he had allegedly conspired with others and both “fabricated and manipulated” evidences to shield the real conspirators and killers.
Andhalkar was the first suspect arrested in the case after the CBI reopened the case in early 2015. Andhalkar was part of the team that had investigated the Shetty murder case and arrested some suspects in the case.
Kauthale, a police sub-inspector, was arrested on April 10. Kauthale had retired as an Assistant police inspector (API) in 2013. Kauthale used to work under BR Andhalkar, who was a police inspector with lCB at the time of Shetty’s murder.
“Kauthale was involved in the initial investigation of the case. He had allegedly conspired with the perpetrators of crime and in furtherance of that he created false evidence and fake eyewitnesses implicating five other accused persons to shield the real conspirators and killers,” a CBI spokesperson said on Friday.
Shetty’s murder had created a major public uproar in Maharashtra.
Shetty’s murder was a consequence of a complaint that he had on October 15, 2009, lodged a complaint with the lonavala police against 13 persons, including Virendra Mhaiskar, chairman and managing director of Ideal Road Builders (IRB) Infrastructure Developers limited, and a sub-registrar, accusing the IRB group of and its subsidiary, Aryan Infrastructure Investment Pvt. ltd., of grabbing government and private land in Maval taluka by forging documents and manipulating land records.
After filing a closure report in the case before a Wadgaon-Maval court in Pune district, the CBI was allowed by the Bombay High Court on March 9, 2015 to re-open the investigations into Shetty’s murder. The re-opening of the case by the CBI followed searches conducted in Pune and Mumbai, in which the agency found “new evidence”.