A special court for UAPA (Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act) cases in Pune, on Friday, sentenced two people to life imprisonment for the murder of rationalist and anti-superstition activist Dr Narendra Dabholkar.
Dabholkar was shot dead while on a morning walk on Omkareshwar Bridge in Pune on August 20, 2013.
Sharad Kalaskar and Sachin Andure, who were the shooters, were found guilty and were convicted in the case.
Three others—Virendrasinh Tawade, Sanjiv Punalekar, and Vikram Bhavehave—have been acquitted by the court in the case. They were acquitted as the prosecution was unable to prove the charges against them in the case.
According to the prosecution, Tawade was one of the masterminds of the murder.
The prosecution examined 20 witnesses while the defence examined two witnesses during the trial. The accused were opposed to Dabholkar's crusade against superstition, the prosecution had stated in its final arguments.
Sanatan Sanstha, to which Tawade and some of the other accused were linked, was opposed to the work carried out by Dabholkar's organisation, the Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti (committee for eradication of superstition, Maharashtra), the prosecution had claimed.
Dabholkar's murder was followed by the murders of three other rationalists/activists in the next four years: communist leader Govind Pansare (Kolhapur, February 2015), Kannada scholar and writer M M Kalburgi (Dharwad, August 2015) and journalist Gauri Lankesh (Bengaluru, September 2017).
—With agency inputs
