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The daughter of 82-year-old slain communist leader Govind Pansare has filed an application to the Bombay High Court seeking to transfer her father’s murder investigation to the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) from the State Special Investigation Team (SIT) to find the real mastermind behind the murder, reported LiveLaw.
On July 7, the Bombay High Court bench led by Justice Revati Mohite Dere sought the State of Maharashtra’s response to the said application.
In the application, the daughter submitted that nearly seven years after her father was gunned down on his morning walk, the SIT failed to make any clinching breakthrough in the case. She further stated that the Maharashtra ATS had drawn a connection between the murders of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar, Professor Kalburgi Pansare and Gauri Lankesh, while investigating the 2019 Nalasopara Arms Case of 2019.
The plea reportedly states, “If immediate steps are not taken, the investigation to bring absconding accused may not happen. To identify the masterminds as well as shooters of Comrade Govind Pansare, Cri Case may be transferred from the respondent SIT to Maharashtra ATS with immediate effect.”
The petition states that despite having filed five different chargesheets by different investigating agencies to probe the murders, no efforts are made by any of them to reach out the masterminds behind all the five cases.
Meanwhile the court also allowed a change in the constitution of the SIT currently probing the case, as three officers have retired, one died and the investigating officer was also due for promotion. The court said that the new investigating officer must be appointed in 4 weeks, reported Live Law.
As of date, the State Government has provided protection to the people in the hitlist and 40 intellectuals along with the petitioner have been provided with the security. “The combined reading of all 5 Chargesheets and specific reading of Chargesheet in the case of Nalasopara Bomb Blast case, it becomes clear that there exists a deeper and larger conspiracy and masterminds behind all the 5 cases are not traced.”
Background
On February 16, 2015, Govind Pansare, a public intellectual and political academic-activist was shot in cold blood while on a morning walk with his wife, who also sustained serious injuries but survived. Govind Pansare succumbed to his injuries four days later, on February 20, 2015. Two years before this shooting, in August 2013, rationalist and anti-superstition activist, Narendra Dabholkar was shot dead in Pune while he was also out for a morning walk. Both these killings took place in Maharashtra. Finally, again on August 30, 2015, the former Vice Chancellor of the Hampi University and scholar MM Kalburgi was also shot dead by a man who knocked at his door, in Dharwad, Karnataka. Then in 2017 journalist Gauri Lankesh was gunned down outside her home in cold blood by two masked men on a motorcycle.
These killings have a chilling similarity. Serious questions about the role of the Sanatan Sanstha, an extreme Hindutva right wing, supremacist organisation have been raised, though denied vociferously by the organisation itself.
Related:
Silencing India’s Public Intellectuals: One Year after Govind Pansare was Shot
Gauri Lankesh case: Why is the Defence harping on alleged “Naxalite connections”, family fued?
‘Meticulous’ investigation yet little headway in Gauri Lankesh murder case