Narendra Dabholkar murder case: Prithviraj Chavan unhappy with the verdict

Narendra Dabholkar. File pic

Former Maharashtra Chief Minister and senior Congress leader Prithviraj Chavan has expressed his disappointment regarding the verdict of the court in the Dr Narendra Dabholkar murder case and claimed that right-wing outfit Sanatan Sanstha was nothing but a "terrorist organisation" who has a hand in the killing of the renowned nationalist but doesn't have clarity yet.

Dr Dabholkar (67) was an anti-superstition campaigner who was shot dead on August 20, 2013, while on a morning walk on a bridge near the Omkareshwar temple in Pune. According to a PTI report, on Friday, a special court for UAPA cases in the city convicted and sentenced two men to life imprisonment and acquitted three in the case. The two assailants - Sachin Andure and Sharad Kalaskar - were sentenced to life imprisonment, but acquitted three others - ENT surgeon Dr Virendrasinh Tawde, Sanjeev Punalekar and Vikram Bhave - for want of evidence, reported PTI.

"I am not happy with the judgment. What is the role of the Sanatan Sanstha and who is the mastermind of the murder has not been made clear. Similarly, (it has not been made clear) if there is a link between Dabholkar's killing and the murders of Govind Pansare and Gauri Lankesh," Chavan told PTI on Friday.

According to the report, Chavan said when he was chief minister, that is between November 2010 and September 2014, the then ACS (Home) Umesh Sarangi had recommended a ban on the Sanatan Sanstha under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) based on an Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) report."There is a process for that where all states are asked about the activities of the (concerned) organisation in their respective areas. Nothing happened for two years after which Dabholkar was killed. In 2014, we sent a 1000-page dossier to the Union home ministry (recommending a ban on the outfit)," he added. "The demand for a ban on the Sanatan Sanstha is still pending with the Centre. The Sanatan Sanstha is a terrorist organisation," Chavan pointed out.

Coincidentally, Sanatan Sanstha spokesperson Abhay Vartak criticised Chavan during a press conference in Pune following the court's decision in the Dabholkar case. Following the assassination of Dr Dabholkar on August 20, 2013, at 7:20 a.m., Vartak claimed that within one and a half hours, then-chief minister of Maharashtra, Prithviraj Chavan, claimed in a television interview that the homicide may have been carried out by pro-Hindutva individuals, misleading the investigation, the report added.

The alarming fact is that 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 is due to this pattern, that the perpetrators of all four murders are somewhat connected.

(With Inputs from PTI)