‘CRUCIAL PAPERS POINT TO LARGER CONSPIRACY IN GANDHI KILLING’

NEW DELHI: Mumbai resident Pankaj Phadnis, who is seeking reinvestigation into the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, claimed on Monday he was in possession of “crucial documents” that show there was a larger conspiracy behind the killing of the Father of the Nation.

Appearing before a bench led by Justice SA Bobde, Phadnis said he received the documents in sealed cover from the United States’s Library of Congress and got them officially from that country’s government. However, he could not make the papers public because they are banned by the government of India.

Phadnis, a trustee of charitable trust Abhinav Bharat, told the bench he had moved the Bombay high court for a judicial order allowing the “import of the documents officially.”

The bench asked Phadnis to submit a formal application with his request to make the documents public. “You mention whatever you have said just now in your application and then we will see whether we can allow you to place the papers officially or not,” the bench said.

The court also said it will first ascertain whether Phadnis’s prayer could be allowed under the law. “We will see this,” the bench told Phadnis when he said he had received a letter from an attorney in New York regarding the technology available to appreciate forensic evidence.

The bench said that with technology, it was possible now to get the forensic evidence but it remains to be seen whether the case needs to be reinvestigated.

The bench has fixed March 6 as the next date of hearing.

PANKAJ PHADNIS SAID HE GOT THE DOCUMENTS IN SEALED COVER FROM THE US’S LIBRARY OF CONGRESS BUT CAN’T MAKE THEM PUBLIC AS THEY ARE BANNED BY GOVERNMENT OF INDIA