LAWYER ALLEGES ‘EXTRA-JUDICIAL CONFESSION’ BY ACCUSED ANDURE
MUMBAI: Sachin Andure, one of the two alleged shooters of Narendra Dabholkar, allegedly made an extra-judicial confession about having killed him to a restaurant owner in Aurangabad days after the rationalist was found dead in Pune in 2013, special public prosecutor Prakash Suryavanshi submitted in the case on Friday. The defence questioned the veracity and admissibility of the evidence.
A new set of draft charges submitted by Suryavanshi include Sections 120(b) (criminal conspiracy) read with 302 (murder), 302 with 34 (common intention), and 302 of Indian Penal Code (IPC) along with Section 16 of Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and Sections of Arms Act against the four accused in the murder. IPC Section 201 (destruction of evidence) has been invoked against a fifth accused.
The defence urged SR Navander, the special judge appointed under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) to hear the case, to consider a trial involving all charge sheets submitted by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), including the one which has contradicting claims about the pair of shooters who killed Dabholkar.
Two bike-borne assailants shot dead Dabholkar in August 2013 and the investigation into the murder was handed over to the CBI a year later. In the 2016 charge sheet, CBI named Virendra Tawade as the main conspirator and Sarang Akolkar and Vinay Pawar as shooters. In 2019, Andure and Sharad Kalaskar were named the two shooters. Another charge sheet in November 2019 named advocate Sanjiv Punalekar and Vikram Bhave as co-conspirators.