New Delhi : The Central Bureau of investigation (CBI) will now take the help of Scotland Yard to figure out whether anti-superstition activist Dr. Narendra Dabholkar, veteran CPI leader Govind Pansare and rationalist writer M.M. Kalburgi were murdered by the same group, sources said.
The move comes after the Bombay High Court last month pulled up investigating agencies over the slow progress in the probe of the murders of veteran Pansare and Dabholkar.
The Bombay High Court had then said that it was ‘not satisfied’ with the progress in the cases, and asked the investigating agencies to submit a progress report by June 23.
Pansare’s family had last year sought a SIT probe, alleging that the Maharashtra Police had failed to make any progress in the investigation of the CPI leader’s murder.
Pansare and his wife were severely injured after unknown assailants fired on the couple on February 16, 2015, while they were out for their morning walk at Sagarmala area of Kolhapur city. Pansare later succumbed to his injuries on February 20 in the hospital.
Dabholkar, a doctor, was at the forefront of a campaign to persuade the Maharashtra Government to pass an anti-superstition and black magic bill. Right wing Hindu groups, including certain sections of the Warkari Sect and political parties, had been opposing to the bill.
The Bombay High Court had transferred the probe of the case to CBI on May 9, 2014 on a PIL filed by former journalist Ketan Tirodkar on the plea that there was no headway several months after the killing of Dabholkar.
Eminent Kannada writer, scholar, rationalist and academic, MM Kalburgi, was shot dead by two unidentified assailants near his residence at Dharwad in north Karnataka. (ANI)