Dabholkar, Pansare cases: Bombay HC summon CBI, Maharashtra government officials

The Bombay High Court today rapped the investigators of the Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare killings saying their probe was unsatisfactory and not carried out sincerely and summoned senior officials of the CBI and the Maharashtra governmentA bench of justices S C Dharamadhikari and Bharati Dangre directed that joint director of the CBI and additional chief secretary of the Maharashtra government remain present in court on July 12The direction came after the court observed that progress reports submitted on Thursday by the CBI and the state CID into the killings of Dabholkar and Pansare respectively were unsatisfactoryDespite claims made by the two agencies of keeping a watch on people and establishments in the state connected tosome extremist organisations the Karnataka Police had arrested an alleged accused in the killing of journalist GauriLankesh from Maharashtra it notedThe CBI and the CID have been maintaining that they are coordinating with the Karnataka Police that is probing thekillings of writer M M Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh it saidThey have also been claiming that they are keeping a watch on certain sansthas or organisations Then how did theKarnataka authorities manage to make an arrest from Maharashtra the bench askedEarlier this month a Special Investigation Team of the Karnataka Police had arrested Parshuram Waghmare fromMaharashtra for allegedly killing LankeshThis prompted the court to ask if authorities in Maharashtra and those probing the Dabholkar and Pansare killings werent as prompt as their counterparts in KarnatakaIs there a lack of coordination or are the authorities before us restricting their probe to merely pursuing mobile phone records the court askedThe same degree of seriousness and promptness as shown prima facie by the Karnataka authorities needs to be adoptedby the Maharashtra CID and the CBI it saidMere status reports do not satisfy us Nor can we accept their statement that they have reached a dead end the judges saidWe dont take any pleasure in summoning these senior police officers But the concerns that this court has raised in the previous hearings havent been assuaged they said The investigations into the killings of Dabholkar and Pansare havent been carried out sincerely Therefore it becomes the duty of this writ court to step in cases as serious as those at hand the bench saidThe court was hearing pleas filed by the family members of Dabholkar and Pansare seeking that the court monitor the probes in both the cases Dabholkar was shot dead on August 20 2013 in Pune while on his morning walkPansare was shot at on February 16 2015 in Kolhapur and succumbed to his injuries on February 20 that year Today Dabholkars daughter Mukta submitted an affidavit in the high court seeking that authorities be directed to deploy a dedicated team of officials to probe into the two killingsShe stated in the affidavit that the state CID and the CBI had earlier said the same weapon was used to kill Pansare and Kalburgi And now the Karnataka authorities said there was a connection between the killings of Kalburgi and LankeshTherefore it was apparent that the above cases were linked and required more coordination among all probe agenciesconcerned she mentioned in the affidavitCatch up on all the latest Crime National International and Hatke news here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updatesThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Except for the change in headline the story has been provided ASIS AS AVAILABLE without any verification or editing from our side Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever