Satish Shetty murder: CBI submits case closure after 8 yrs, family disappointed

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Eight years after RTI activist Satish Shetty was brutally murdered near his home in Talegaon, the CBI is still clueless about his killers and, yet, has submitted a closure report in the case before the Pune district special court, giving a clean chit to four out of the six accused it had named in its charge sheet. The other two are former policemen who tampered with evidence during the investigation.

Over the years
Satish was murdered on January 13, 2010, while he was out for a morning walk. He had lodged complaints of land-grabbing in the Mumbai-Pune Expressway project against IRB Infrastructure and some government officials in 2009.

The CBI, investigating the case since September 2010, had filed a closure report in the case in 2014, saying it would probe the Expressway land scam. Then, in February 2015, it had re-opened the murder case. Last month, the agency had discharged IRB officials, including its CMD Virendra Mhaiskar, in the land scam.

Speaking to mid-day, a CBI officer said, "The trial will continue against the remaining two. No prosecutable evidence was found against the other four. We submitted the final report on Monday and are investigating the case."

The two sides
Satish's younger brother Sandeep said, "I knew this was going to happen; I was prepared for it, because the CBI had voluntarily taken up the case. For the past few months, no one from the agency spoke to me; in fact, the accused have got a copy of the CBI report, but I, the complainant, still haven't. All the high and mighty are being shielded. I am disappointed and will be moving an appeal in the high court."

Mhaiskar issued a press note, which stated, "This finally brings visibility to the long drawn investigation and once again proves the fact that we are law-abiding citizen[s] with no criminal intent and have [the] utmost respect towards the law of land and judiciary. The learning from the experience can be explained in one line - 'Activism is an essential ingredient of democracy, but that should not be used to terrorize the lives of innocent people'."

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