Dabholkar case: CBI has six weeks to get laboratory report

The Bombay high court has reprimanded the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and gave it a last six-week time to procure ballistic reports from the forensic science laboratory of Scotland Yard on evidence in the murder cases of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar, communist leader Govind Pansare and scholar M.M. Kalburgi. The report is awaited to ascertain if a single country-made weapon of 7.65 mm caliber was used to kill the three rationalists between 2013 and 2015.

The court told the CBI that this was the last opportunity being given to it to obtain the lab reports and warned that no further time would be granted. The court was hearing a batch of petitions filed by the families of Dabholkar and Pansare seeking monitoring of probes in both the cases by the high court.

The judges reprimanded the CBI after additional Solicitor General Anil Singh failed to produce the ballistic report and sought more time to submit the same. He informed the court that all necessary permissions and clearances had been obtained from the authorities to visit Scotland Yard. He said that an officer would personally visit the lab abroad and obtain the reports. The court observed that the agency had been given time since May 2016 to obtain the reports and no more time would be given after the next hearing.

The CBI, probing the Dabholkar murder, and Special Investigation Team (SIT) of Maharashtra, investigating the Pansare killing, on Thursday submitted fresh reports on the probe. The reports were presented to the court in a sealed cover by Mr Singh (for CBI) and government pleader Mankunwar Deshmukh (for SIT).

The judges also told the SIT to exercise caution when it comes to witnesses’ protection and not to disclose any investigation details to the media. The bench also observed that if the investigations do not conclude fast, it might give an impression to the people at large that it does not want to arrest certain people.