The United Kingdom’s Scotland Yard has refused to help the Central Bureau of Investigation in its forensic inquiry into the murders of Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare, the Indian agency told the Bombay High Court on Friday. London’s Metropolitan Police Service said it cannot participate in the probe as there was no forensic data-sharing pact between India and the UK, the CBI told a bench of the court, according to The Hindu.
The agency also submitted a report from the Forensic Science Laboratory in Ahmedabad on the ballistic evidence related to the murders of rationalist thinkers Dabholkar, Pansare and MM Kalburgi. This is the third such report submitted to the court – the CBI ordered for it after the previous two examinations by laboratories in Bengaluru and Mumbai presented conflicting opinions.
The Bombay High Court bench, comprising justices SC Dharmadhikari and BP Colabawalla, said it was “very unhappy” with CBI’s progress in the investigations, The Times of India reported. The judges said the agency had wasted “considerable time, effort and energy” in trying to obtain an opinion from the Scotland Yard. It also noted the lack of developments in the proceedings at courts in Pune and Kolhapur, which are hearing the Dabholkar and Pansare cases.
This is not the first time the Bombay High Court has criticised the CBI. On December 16, 2016, the court accused the agency of “bungling up” the inquiry into Dabholkar’s murder. In June 2016, the CBI had arrested Virendra Tawde, a member of right-wing group Sanathan Sastha, in the case. Dabholkar, who had been campaigning for an anti-superstition legislation in Maharashtra for years, was murdered near his Pune home in 2013.
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