The Bombay High Court on Thursday criticised officials from the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Maharashtra government for conducting an “unsatisfactory inquiry” into the murders of rationalists Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare, PTI reported.
A bench of justices S C Dharamadhikari and Bharati Dangre directed the investigating agency’s joint director and the state’s additional chief secretary to appear in court on July 12. The court said the investigations have not been “conducted sincerely”.
Dabholkar was shot dead in Pune on August 20, 2013, and Pansare was killed in Kolhapur in February two years later. The Central Bureau of Investigation is looking into Dabholkar’s murder, and a special team led by the additional superintendent of police in Kolhapur is investigating that of Pansare.
“The CBI and the CID have been maintaining that they are coordinating with the Karnataka Police that is probing the killings of writer M M Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh,” the court said. “They have also been claiming that they are keeping a watch on certain ‘sansthas’ or organisations. Then how did the Karnataka authorities manage to make an arrest from Maharashtra?”
It added: “Is there a lack of coordination, or are the authorities before us restricting their probe to merely pursuing mobile phone records?”
The court was hearing petitions filed by the victims’ families that sought its monitoring of the investigations. “We do not take any pleasure in summoning these senior police officers,” the court said. “But the concerns that this court has raised in the previous hearings haven’t been assuaged.”
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