MUMBAI: A key suspect in the murder of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar has been arrested by the CBI, five years after the 67-year-old was shot dead by gunmen in Pune. Sachin Prakasrao Andure was arrested from Aurangabad.
According to the CBI, Andure was allegedly one of the shooters who fired at Narendra Dabholkar on August 20, 2013 in Pune while he was out for his morning walk. The arrest days comes after the Bombay High Court came down heavily on central and state agencies probing the killings of Dabholkar and Govind Pansare, also rationalists reviled by right-wing groups for their campaign against superstition.
Meanwhile, The Maharashtra Andhashradha Nirmulan Samiti (MANS) claims that it has no hope from the BJP-led state government so far as the tracking of the absconding killers in the August 2013 Dabholkar murder case is concerned. It has said that the role, if any, of three recently arrested Right Wing terror suspects should be probed as the police has them under its scanner.

“Their planning of the terror attack was so bad that even the BJP government could not help but arrest them,” said Milind Jadhav, chief of state MANS. He was talking to the media ahead of the fifth anniversary of the Dabholkar murder on August 20. He added, “It is great news that the Karnataka government could arrest people in connection with murder of Gauri Lankesh, a journalist.

They will file a charge sheet soon. Even after five years of murder of Dr Dabholkar, Maharashtra government has made no progress. They could arrest a few men as Karnataka government gave them clues from the Lankesh investigation.” The Dabholkar case is being probed by the CBI.
MANS has planned many programmes on August 20 which would be graced by actors Prakash Raj and Amol Palekar and also by Tushar Gandhi. Nandini Jadhav, chief of Pune district unit, said, “Though the killers in the case have not been arrested, we have continued to hold peaceful protests on every 20th of August for the last 59 months.”
The court had said earlier this month that the authorities were showing no urgency despite the country witnessing a “tragic phase” where one cannot speak or move around freely.

Saying that they were not satisfied with the probe, the judges hearing the case returned the “confidential reports” submitted by the Maharashtra Police and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) with an observation that there was nothing confidential in those reports.(With Agency Inputs ).

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