PUNE: A
special court
in the city will pronounce on Friday its much-anticipated
verdict
in the
Narendra Dabholkar
murder trial, almost 11 years after the veteran
rationalist
was gunned down on August 20, 2013, by two bike-borne men on the Vitthal Ramji Shinde bridge near Omkareshwar temple.
The murder trial commenced only in September 2021. It was delayed because of varied reasons, including the
Central Bureau of Investigation
's (
CBI
) effort to secure a
forensic opinion
on evidence from the Scotland Yard in the UK and an elaborate albeit unsuccessful effort to recover the firearms, allegedly used in the crime, from the Thane creek riverbed.
The outcome of the trial holds a huge significance because Dabholkar's murder set off a chain of targeted killings of well-known rationalists over the next four years, including veteran Leftist leader Govind Pansare (in Kolhapur on Feb 16, 2015), scholar MM Kalburgi (in Dharwad, Karnataka, on August 30, 2015) and journalist Gauri Lankesh (in Bengaluru on Sept 20, 2017).
The CBI arrested Virendrasinh Tawde, a Panvel-based ENT surgeon; alleged shooters Sachin Andure and Sharad Kalaskar; Vikram Bhave and Mumbai lawyer Sanjeev Punalekar in the
Dabholkar
case between June 2016 and September 2019. Bhave and Punalekar are out on bail.
Tawde has been named the "main conspirator". He was then "deputy chief organiser of
Hindu Jan Jagruti Samiti
, a sister outfit of Sanatan Sanstha, at loggerheads with Dabholkar over the latter's anti-superstition drive".
CBI's special prosecutor Prakash Suryawanshi examined 20 witnesses in support of the prosecution's case before furnishing a final report in September 2023, signalling the closure of evidence. All the witnesses have supported the prosecution's case.
Defence lawyers Virendra Ichalkaranjikar, Prakash Salsingikar and Suvarna Avhad-Vats examined two defence witnesses to show that the alleged shooters were not present in Pune when Dabholkar was shot dead.
The prosecution and defence lawyers have filed written arguments after arguing the matter at length. Lawyer Omkar Nevgi, representing Dabholkar's son, Hamid, and daughter, Mukta, also filed arguments in support of the prosecution's case.
Yerawada central jail superintendent Sunil Dhamal told TOI, "During the last hearing on April 18, we have received instructions from the district and sessions court to produce Tawde, Andure and Kalaskar before the special court at 11am on May 10. The accused will be handed over to a special police squad for producing them before the judge."
Deputy commissioner of police (zone 1) Sandeep Singh Gill said, "We have asked the Shivajinagar police and the inspector in charge of maintaining the deployment in the sessions court to ensure that proper security arrangements are in place, and no law and order problem is reported when the accused in the Dabhokar murder case are produced before the court."
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