A special UAPA court in Pune convicted two men for murdering anti-superstition crusader Dr Narendra Dabholkar in 2013, on Friday. The court acquitted three others.
Two shooters — Sharad Kalaskar and Sachin Andure — have been held guilty. Three other accused — Virendrasinh Tawade, Sanjiv Punalekar, and Vikram Bhave — were acquitted as the prosecution failed to prove the charges.
On August 20, 2013, 67-year-old Dr Narendra Dabholkar, a renowned rationalist, was shot dead while on a morning stroll on Pune’s Omkareshwar Bridge. Five people were named as accused in the case.
The prosecution examined 20 witnesses while the defence examined two witnesses during the trial.
According to the prosecution, the accused murdered Narendra Dabholkar because he had been running a campaign against superstition.
In 2014, the Central Bureau of Investigation took over the probe after the Bombay high court’s direction. It later arrested ENT surgeon Dr Virendrasinh Tawade, who was linked to the Hindu right-wing organisation, Sanatan Sanstha.
Dabholkar used to run an outfit called Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti (committee for eradication of superstition, Maharashtra). The Sanatan Sanstha was against the outfit’s work, the prosecution had claimed.
The CBI first named fugitives Sarang Akolkar and Vinay Pawar as the shooters in its charge sheet. Later, they arrested Sachin Andure and Sharad Kalaskar, claiming they were Dabholkar’s shooters. The agency later arrested advocate Sanjeev Punalekar and Vikram Bhave/
The accused were booked under Indian Penal Code sections 120 B (conspiracy ), 302 (murder), relevant sections of the Arms Act, and section 16 (Punishment for terrorist act ) of the UAPA.
After Dabholkar’s murder, three other rationalists and activists were murdered across India over the next four years. They were: Govind Pansare (Kolhapur, February 2015), Kannada scholar and writer M M Kalburgi (Dharwad, August 2015) and journalist Gauri Lankesh (Bengaluru, September 2017).
