Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Friday admitted appeals by Sachin Andure and Sharad Kalaskar who were convicted for the murder of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar in May.
A sessions court in Pune had convicted the two in May for murder of rationalist Dabholkar and sentenced them to life in prison. The sessions observed that it was “crystal clear” that Andure and Kalaskar had fired bullets at Dabholkar. The investigating agency had claimed that Andure and Kalaskar came on a motorbike and shot Dabholkar twice, killing him instantly.
The court had acquitted three other accused Virendrasinh Tawade, Sanjiv Punalekar and Vikram Bhave from the charges. The trio were accused of being the mastermind behind the murder.
On February 16, 2015, Pansare (82) and his wife Uma were returning home from their morning walk in the Samrat Nagar area of Kolhapur when two bike-borne men fired multiple rounds at them before fleeing. Pansare succumbed to his injuries on February 20, 2015, while under treatment at the Breach Candy Hospital in Mumbai. His wife survived the attack after receiving treatment in the hospital.
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After the initial investigation by the local police, the case was handed over to a special investigation team (SIT), which arrested the first accused on September 15, 2015.
Dabholkar’s murder was the first in a chain of similar killings of three other rationalists and activists – Communist Party of India leader Govind Pansare in Kolhapur in February 2015, Kannada-language scholar MM Kalburgi in Dharwad in August 2015, and journalist Gauri Lankesh in Bengaluru in September 2017.
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