Two assassins, 4 bullets, a foreign hand, said PIL

NEW DELHI: Almost 80 years after Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated in Delhi on January 30, a Mumbai-based engineer has claimed the investigation and trial was a cover-up and has requested the Supreme Court to order a fresh probe.

Senior advocate Amrendra Sharan told the court on Monday there was no proof that Gandhi was killed by a person other than Hindu radical Nathuram Godse and there was no need for fresh investigation. But the petitioner, Pankaj Kumudchandra Phadnis, is convinced there was another assassin and a foreign power was involved in the murder.

Speaking to HT over phone from Mumbai, Phadnis said he had not seen Sharan’s report but had heard that he told the court there was no proof to back the claim made in the petition.

“But it has to be kept in mind that evidence is of two types — evidence that helps investigation and another is prosecutable evidence. So I do not know what the amicus is pointing to.”

An engineer by training, Phadnis, who is also an MBA, is a trustee of the Mumbai wing of

Abhinav Bharat, a right-wing Hindu organisation. Phadnis has distanced himself from the Pune branch of Abhinav Bharat, one of whose founders, Lt Col Prasad Shrikant Purohit, is facing trial in the Malegaon blast case.

He was not the first person to raise questions over the investigation and trial into Independent India’s most-talked about murder, Phadnis said.

“In fact, a book, Who Killed Gandhi, written in 1963, raised the issue and the allegations that

I have made are echoed in it.”

The book was banned and his petition to lift the ban was pending with the Bombay high court, Phadnis said.

He also dismissed allegation that through his petition, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, the ideological parent of the BJP, was seeking to clear itself of the accusation of its involvement in Gandhi’s murder.

“There is no basis to the allegation. I have been filing petitions since 2004,” he said.