Panvel doctor, assassins killed Dabholkar, says CBI chargesheet

PUNE: The chargesheet in the Narendra Dabholkar murder case, filed in a Pune court on Tuesday, says that the main accused, an ENT doctor named Virendrasinh Tawde, had personal differences/animosity with Dabholkar going back to 2002 when Tawde was “a force behind the (Sanatan) Sanstha and the Hindu Janjagruti Samiti (HJS) in Kolhapur”.
Assailants had fired at Dabholkar using a countrymade firearm while he was out on a walk in Pune on an August morning in 2013.
Tawde, a Navi Mumbai-based ENT doctor, was arrested nearly three years later on June 10, 2016 for his role in the conspiracy.
The CBI chargesheet filed in the court of first class judicial magistrate V B Gulve-Patil, however, does not name any person or institution as having masterminded or ordered the hit. It does say though that the assailants, Sarang Akolkar and Vinay Pawar, who are still absconding plotted and carried out the killing along with the doctor.
The CBI has relied on the confessional statement of Sanjay Sadvilkar, a former associate of Tawde, who was approached by Tawde and Akolkar in 2013 for procurement of firearms, besides, e-mails exchanged between Tawde and Akolkar in April 2009, and a computer hard disk containing material and photographs for evidence. The hard disk was seized on June 1 this year during CBI’s searches atTawde’s residence in Panvel.
A provocative article published on August 18, 2013 (two days before the murder) in the sanstha’s mouthpiece 'Sanatan Prabhat’ has been described by the CBI as the motivating factor for Tawde, Akolkar and Pawar to execute the conspiracy. According to the chargesheet, Sadvilkar identified Akolkar as one of the assailants from the sketches of Dabholkar’s killers shown to him by CBI.
Pawar was identified as the other assailant from the sketches shown to two other eye-witnesses, sweeper Vinay Kelkar and businessman Maninath Gaikwad, who were present at the spot when Dabholkar was killed. The agency, which took over the probe on June 2, 2014 following the Bombay high court’s order, has invoked charges under Sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy) read with 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code against the accused while stating that further investigation is in progress to trace, locate and examine the actual assailants, who have been identified, in the murder and any other conspirator. A total of 58 witnesses have been named in the chargesheet and the CBI has filed 121 documents in support of its case.