Declining to grant further extension to his police custody by two days, a Kolhapur court on Monday remanded Sanatan Sanstha activist Samir Gaikwad, the accused in the sensational murder of CPI activist Govind Pansare , to judicial custody till October 9.
Rejecting a plea by the prosecution seeking the extension of police custody till September 30, the court remanded him in judicial custody for 11 days.
As many as 15 lawyers were present at the court to argue Gaikwad’s bail application, while the prosecution had 20 lawyers on its side.
Apart from seeking the extension in the police custody of Gaikwad, the prosecution also moved the court for the brain-mapping of the Pansare murder case accused. The court will hear the prosecution’s application on Tuesday.
Talking to mediapersons outside the court, Public Prosecutor Vishakha Bharte said: “We asked for his (Gaikwad’s) custody for another two days as the police wanted to confront him with some suspects and interrogate them but the court didn’t accept our contention”.
Earlier in the court, the Prosecution had made a strong case before Judge RD Shinde for extension of Gaikwad’s police custody on the ground that it wanted to examine the call data records obtained from 31 SIM cards and 23 mobile handsets allegedly used by Gaikwad.
Preliminary investigations have revealed that it was the frequent change of SIM cards that had made Kolhapur police suspicious of Gaikwad, who had been kept under surveillance for many days before he was arrested formally from Sangli in western Maharashtra on September 16.
Special Public Prosecutor Chandrakant Budhale had said the Kolhapur police had recovered a laptop, 23 mobile handsets, 50 SIM cards from Gaikwad’s Sangli house and the investigators were examining the latter’s call data records (CDR).
“The police recovered two mobile phones from Samir’s custody, while 23 cell phones were seized from his house. The call data in the mobile phones are being analysed. That’s why the police wanted more time to interrogate him. The police also want to question Samir about the places where he had reconnaissance before committing the crime,” Budhale said.
Pansare (82) and his wife Uma (67) had been shot from a close range, near their residence “Ideal Housing Society” at around 8.30 am on February 16 this year, when the couple was returning from a morning walk from the Shivaji University campus at Kolhapur. While Pansare sustained bullet wounds on the nape of his neck and another minor injury on his hand, wife Uma suffered a bullet injury on her neck.
The critically injured Pansare, who had undergone two surgeries while he was being treated at Kolhapur’s Aster Aadhar Hospital, was shifted to Mumbai’s Breach Candy Hospital on February 20 after he suffered excessive bleedings in his lungs. However, he died of a heart failure at the Breach Candy Hospital the same night.
Pansare’s murder, it may recalled, had come on the heels of a gruesome murder of 69-year-old anti-superstition campaigner Dabholkar, who 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.
Given that there are uncanny similarities between the murders of Dahboikar and Pansare, the investigators are trying to ascertain if Gaikwad also had any role to play in the killing of the Pune-based rationalist.
Meanwhile, the Karnataka police are also investigating whether Gaikwad had any role in the gruesome murder of Kannada scholar MM Kalburgi, who was shot dead at point-blank range by two unidentified men at his residence in Dharwad on August 30.