6 months after CBI took over, family questions ‘slow’ probe

A senior officer from the CBI said the team had not even visited Satara, Dabholkar’s hometown, and had been to Pune only five or six times. The Indian Express has reported in the past that the CBI team took more than four months just to translate the documents collected from the Pune police.

Dabholkar was shot dead by two unidentified persons around 7.10 am on August 20 last year, on the bridge near Omkareshwar temple in Pune. In January this year, the Pune police arrested two arms dealers Manish Nagori alias Manya (24) and Vilas Khandelwal (22) based on ballastic reports and said the two had supplied the weapon used in the crime. Several doubts have been raised even by many police officers about the arrests. The case was handed over to the CBI by the Bombay High Court in May this year, after the state police failed to crack it.

Hameed added: “We do not want to question the working of any individual, but seeing the developments till now, we have serious doubts about how serious the CBI is as an institution about the murder. We feel the CBI is treating the case like any other and has not taken into consideration the social repercussions it has had.”

Avinash Patil, executive president of the Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti, an organisation founded by Dabholkar, said: “The team probing the case has very little manpower and since the case was handed over to it, the team has seen some changes too. The CBI has hardly ever contacted us or the family members of Dr Dabholkar on its own about the progress. We went to the CBI in the beginning to give them information, which we felt could be helpful. They had told us then that they would probe the case afresh, but if that was their plan why have they not started at least recording the statements. The team members also have a language problem as most of the available documents are in Marathi.”

Till Thursday, the CBI had not replied to the query sent by The Indian Express, seeking details of the progress in the probe till now and asking for the agency’s reaction. When contacted, an officer from the CBI Crime Branch in Mumbai, who did not want to be named, said: “We have been asked not to talk to media about the investigation.”