Pansare case: Want to celebrate murder anniversaries or solve them, HC to CBI, cops

The Bombay High Court yesterday slammed the Maharashtra Police and the Central Bureau of Investigation CBI for their lackadaisical investigation into the murders of rationalist Govind Pansare The court also took up the slow investigation into murder cases of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar and scholar MM KalburgiGovind Pansare left Narendra Dabolkar top and M M Kalburgi aboveldquoAre you going to celebrate anniversary after anniversary of these murders and keep filing status reports on the investigations Despite being competent you have not done anything in all the murdersrdquo said an HC bench comprising Justice SC Dharmadhikari and Justice Shalini Phansalkar Joshi while hearing two petitions mdash one filed by Smita Pansare daughterinlaw of Govind Pansare asking for a fair investigation and another by activist Ketan Tirodkar who demanded that like the Dabolkar case the Pansare case be transferred to the CBISpecial public prosecutor Sandeep Shinde told the bench that the Pansare case investigation had slowed down as the police are awaiting a report from the central forensic laboratory in New Delhi ldquoThe CBI the Karnataka Police and the Maharashtra Police had met after similarities were found in the three murders At the meeting it was decided that bullets from all the cases will be sent to the forensic laboratory in New Delhi by the CBI to ascertain the similarities We are awaiting the results A chargesheet has already been filed in Pansarersquos caserdquoTo this Justice Dharmadhikari questioned ldquoWhen did you submit the bullets to CBIrdquo And when the bench was told that it was in Februray Dharmadhikari said ldquoThis kind of state of affairs is not acceptable None of the three cases has been investigated till date Are you investigating similarities or crimes Despite being competent agencies everybody is sitting on it This is a crime against society and needs to be investigatedrdquoldquoNow people have started thinking that until the high court intervenes investigations donrsquot progressrdquo he addedMoreover Smita Pansarersquos lawyer told the court that a local court hearing the Pansare case hasnrsquot granted the police permission to send the bullets to Delhi He further added that out of the three eyewitnesses in the case the statement of only one has been recorded till dateAlso after the murder Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had said that since the CCTV camera footage of the murder was blurred it would be sent to London to make it clearer ldquoWhat has happened to the footage We donrsquot have any cluerdquo questioned Pansarersquos lawyerSmita Pansare also appealed to the court against Tirodkarrsquos PIL demanding that their case not be transferred to CBI like the Dabholkar murder case and asked that accused Sameer Gaikwadrsquos trial be stayed ldquoI am in jail since last seven months and they want a stay on the trialrdquo said Sanjeev Punalekar Gaikwadrsquos lawyerThe HC bench ordered both the state and CBI through Attorney General Anil Singh to file a detailed report on the progress of the investigations by TuesdayAbout the Dabolkar case Singh could not provide any update saying that the investigation officer of the case was in Chennai and was not able to update him on the matter