The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is probing the 2013 murder of rationalist Dr. Narendra Dabholkar, has recovered a firearm from a creek in Maharashtra’s Thane district.
Sources in the agency, speaking on condition of anonymity, said only a ballistic report from forensic labs would reveal whether or not the weapon was the one with which the eminent rationalist was killed.
Officials, however, have not divulged details of the kind of firearm they have retrieved nor details about the search operation.
In April last year, the CBI had told the Bombay High Court that it was taking help from foreign experts and divers to salvage the murder weapon used to kill both Dr. Dabholkar and veteran Communist leader Govind Pansare, who was shot in Kolhapur in February 2015.
In July 2018, the CBI had disclosed before a Pune court that Sharad Kalaskar — named as one of two assailants by the agency — had allegedly dismantled four countrymade pistols and thrown the arms in the water in creeks in Greater Mumbai and Thane, while suggesting that one of the firearms among them could possibly have been the weapon used to kill Dr. Dabholkar.
Then, on May 25, lawyer Sanjeev Punalekar (who is counsel for the right wing Sanatan Sanstha) was arrested along with Sanatan Sanstha member Vikram Bhave by the CBI after the agency alleged that the duo had participated in the conspiracy to murder Dr. Dabholkar.
Mr. Punalekar, who was later released on bail in July that year, was charged with destruction of evidence and for advising Mr. Kalaskar to allegedly destroy the murder weapon.
In his statement to the CBI in 2018, Mr. Kalaskar had allegedly said that Mr. Punalekar, known for his statements against Dr. Dabholkar, had asked him to destroy the weapons.
According to the CBI, Mr. Kalaskar had further revealed that it was the Thane-based Mr. Bhave who had allegedly planned the reconnaissance and had even pointed out Dr. Dabholkar to the assailants. The agency claimed that Mr. Bhave had also planned the getaway route for the shooters after the crime.
Motorcycle-borne assailants had killed Dr. Dabholkar on August 20, 2013, with a 7.65-mm countrymade pistol when he was taking his morning stroll on the Omkareshwar Bridge in Pune. Mr. Pansare, and his wife Uma, were similarly shot at close range from two 7.65-mm countrymade weapons. The same modus operandi was used in the murders of scholar-rationalist M.M. Kalburgi, who was killed by two unidentified assailants outside his home in Dharwad in Kanataka, as well as senior journalist Gauri Lankesh, who was shot to death outside her Bengaluru residence in September 2017.
