Two get life sentence in Narendra Dabholkar murder case; 3 acquitted

Pune: A special court for UAPA cases in Maharashtra’s Pune on Friday convicted two accused persons and acquitted three in the murder of anti-superstition crusader and rationalist Narendra Dabholkar.

Accused Sachin Andure, Sharad Kalaskar were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment along with penalty of ₹5 lakh.

Dr Virendrasingh Tawade, Vikram Bhave and Sanjeev Punalekar were acquitted.

Dabholkar (67), a well-known rationalist, was shot dead while on a morning walk on Omkareshwar Bridge here on August 20, 2013. Five persons have been named as accused in the case.

Additional sessions judge A A Jadhav of the special court for cases under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act pronounced the judgement on Friday.

The prosecution examined 20 witnesses while the defence examined two witnesses during the trial.

The accused were opposed to Dabholkar's crusade against superstition, the prosecution had stated in its final arguments.

Pune police initially probed the case. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) took over the probe in 2014 following a Bombay High Court, order and arrested Dr Virendrasinh Tawade, an ENT surgeon linked to the Hindu right-wing organisation Sanatan Sanstha, in June 2016.

According to the prosecution, Tawade was one of the masterminds of the murder.

Sanatan Sanstha, to which Tawade and some of the other accused were linked, was opposed to the work carried out by Dabholkar's organisation, the Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti (committee for eradication of superstition, Maharashtra), it claimed.

The CBI first named fugitives Sarang Akolkar and Vinay Pawar as the shooters in its charge sheet.

But later it arrested Sachin Andure and Sharad Kalaskar, and claimed in a supplementary charge sheet that they had shot Dabholkar.

Subsequently, the central agency arrested advocate Sanjeev Punalekar and Vikram Bhave as alleged co-conspirators.

During the trial, advocate Virendra Ichalkaranjikar, one of the defence lawyers, had questioned the CBI's flip-flop over the shooters' identity.

The accused were booked under Indian Penal Code sections 120 B (conspiracy ), 302 (murder), relevant sections of the Arms Act, and section 16 (Punishment for terrorist act ) of the UAPA.

While Tawade, Andure and Kalaskar are in jail, Punalekar and Bhave are out on bail.

Dabholkar's murder was followed by the murders of three other rationalists/activists in the next four years: communist leader Govind Pansare (Kolhapur, February 2015), Kannada scholar and writer M M Kalburgi (Dharwad, August 2015) and journalist Gauri Lankesh (Bengaluru, September 2017).

It was suspected that the culprits in these four cases were linked to each other.