A Pune court on Thursday sentenced two people to life in prison for the 2013 killing of campaigner Narendra Dabholkar while three additional defendants in the case were cleared by the court.
Narendra Dabholkar, the leader of Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti, was shot dead in Pune on 20 August, 2013, reportedly by members of a fringe organisation.
The shooting deaths of Govind Pansare in February 2015 and MM Kalburgi in August of the same year occurred after Dabholkar’s assassination in Pune. In September 2017, Gauri Lankesh was fatally murdered outside her Bengaluru residence.
The prosecution examined 20 witnesses while the defence examined two witnesses during the trial.
The accused were opposed to Dabholkar’s crusade against superstition, the prosecution had stated in its final arguments.
Pune police initially probed the case. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) took over the probe in 2014 following a Bombay High Court order and arrested Dr Virendrasinh Tawade, an ENT surgeon linked to the Hindu right-wing organisation Sanatan Sanstha, in June 2016.
According to the prosecution, Tawade was one of the masterminds of the murder.
Sanatan Sanstha, to which Tawade and some of the other accused were linked, was opposed to the work carried out by Dabholkar’s organisation, the Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti (committee for eradication of superstition, Maharashtra), it claimed.
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Narendra Dabholkar murder case: Pune court sentences two for life in prison, acquits three
