A photo from an event commemorating Govind Pansare. | সৌম্যশান্ত রিজওয়ান রক্ষিত/Facebook
The Kolhapur bench of the Bombay High Court allowed bail to Virendra Tawade, Sharad Kalaskar and Amol Kale.
The Bombay High Court on Tuesday granted bail to three prime accused in the murder of Communist Party of India leader Govind Pansare, reported Live Law.
Justice Shivkumar Dige of the Kolhapur bench of the High Court granted bail to Virendra Tawade, Sharad Kalaskar and Amol Kale.
Pansare, a rationalist, was shot by two unidentified gunmen on his way home from a morning walk in Kolhapur on February 16, 2015. He died four days later.
In January, the High Court approved bail for six other persons accused in the matter – Sachin Andure, Ganesh Miskin, Amit Degvekar, Amit Baddi, Bharat Kurane and Vasudev Suryavanshi – citing their prolonged incarceration, the presence of more than 250 witnesses in the case and the trial’s slow progress.
Three persons accused of involvement in Pansare’s killing – Tawade, Kalaskar and Andure – were also named in the case involving the killing of anti-superstition activist Narendra Dabholkar.
In May 2024, a Pune court convicted Kalaskar and Andure in the Dabholkar murder case, sentencing them to life imprisonment. Tawade was among persons who were acquitted in the matter. The acquittals have been challenged by Dabholkar’s family.
Dabholkar, a rationalist and founder of the Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti, was shot dead in Pune in August 2013.
The High Court in January halted the judicial monitoring of the investigation in Pansare’s case.
Initially, the investigation was handled by a Special Investigation Team of the Maharashtra Police’s Crime Investigation Department. In August 2022, the High Court transferred the case to the Anti-Terrorism Squad to expedite the probe.
This came after Smita Pansare, Govind Pansare’s daughter, moved the High Court about the investigating agency’s slow progress in the case.
She argued that the murders of her father and other prominent activists – Dabholkar, MM Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh – were interlinked and possibly orchestrated by a common entity. She claimed they were targeted for opposing right-wing ideologies.
Kalburgi, a Kendriya Sahitya Akademi awardee and anti-superstition activist, was shot dead by two assailants at his home in Dharwad district in Karnataka in August 2015. The assailants then escaped on a two-wheeler.
Lankesh, the editor of a periodical named Gauri Lankesh Patrike and a prominent critic of Hindutva groups, was shot dead outside her home in Bengaluru’s Rajarajeshwari Nagar by a group of men in September 2017 as she was returning home from work.
In 2019, the Special Investigation Team probing Kalburgi’s murder filed a chargesheet against six persons, which included Suryavanshi and Baddi, who were accused in Pansare’s murder.
All six were also named as accused in Lankesh’s murder case.
Sourced from SCROLL.IN
