Dabholkar murder case: CBI submits list of documents, witnesses to court

By PTI

PUNE: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday submitted to a special court here a list of documents and witnesses that it would like to rely upon in the trial of rationalist Dr Narendra Dabholkar murder case.

The list was submitted to Additional Sessions Judge S R Navandar (special judge for UAPA cases).

On September 15, the court had framed charges against the five accused in the case.

While it had charged four accused under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), the fifth accused was charged only with the destruction of evidence.

“As charges have been framed, we submitted a list of documents and witnesses related to the case in the court that the prosecution would like to rely upon,” special public prosecutor Prakash Suryawanshi said.

The defence would file its say on the submitted list of documents and witnesses, he added.

Dabholkar (67), who headed the Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti, an anti-superstition outfit, was shot dead in Pune on August 20, 2013, allegedly by members of a right-wing extremist group.

The CBI has been conducting a probe into the case which was earlier with the Pune police.

Virendra Sinh Tawde, Sachin Andure, Sharad Kalaskar, Sanjeev Punalekar and Vikram Bhave are five accused in the case.

The court framed the charges against Tawde, Andure, Kalaskar and Bhave under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 302 (murder), 120 (B) (criminal conspiracy), 34 (common intention), relevant sections of the Arms Act and section 16 of the stringent UAPA) (punishment for terrorist act).

Besides, charges were framed against Punalekar under IPC section 201 (causing disappearance of evidence or giving false inform to screen offender).

Meanwhile, the defence moved a plea before the court along with an article published in a Marathi daily seeking to initiate a process to issue a contempt of court notice against the author, editor and the publication for publishing the article.

According to the defence’s application, the (author) of the article claims that this court (of additional sessions judge, before whose court the trial us undergoing) is conducting a trial without authority as the case involved section under UAPA.