A special UAPA court on Friday convicted two men for murdering anti-superstition crusader Narendra Dabholkar in 2013. The court acquitted three other accused.
The special UAPA court in Pune held two shooters, Sharad Kalaskar and Sachin Andure guilty.The other three accused, Virendrasinh Tawade, Sanjiv Punalekar, and Vikram Bhave were acquitted as the prosecution failed to prove the charges.
Narendra Dabholkar, 67-year-old renowned nationalist was shot dead on August 20, 2013. He was on a morning stroll on Pune’s Omkareshwar Bridge. Notably, five people were named as accused in the case. The prosecution examined 20 witnesses while the defence examined two witnesses during the trial.
As per the prosecution, the accused murdered Narendra Dabholkar because he had been running a campaign against superstition. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in 2014 took over the probe after the Bombay high court’s direction. Later, the investigation agency arrested ENT surgeon Dr Virendrasinh Tawade, who was linked to the Hindu right-wing organisation, Sanatan Sanstha.
The prosecution had asserted that Tawade was the mastermind of the murder. Narendra Dabholkar used to run an outfit called Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti (committee for eradication of superstition, Maharashtra). The prosecution has further claimed that the Sanatan Sanstha was against the outfit’s work.
The nodal agency first named fugitives Sarang Akolkar and Vinay Pawar as the shooters in its charge sheet. Later, they arrested Sachin Andure and Sharad Kalaskar, mentioning that they were Dabholkar’s shooters. The CBI then arrested advocate Sanjeev Punalekar and Vikram Bhave.
Pertinently, 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.
Following Narendra Dabholkar’s murder, three other rationalists and activists were murdered across India over the next four years. They were Govind Pansare (Kolhapur, February 2015), Kannada scholar and writer M M Kalburgi (Dharwad, August 2015) and journalist Gauri Lankesh (Bengaluru, September 2017).