Nothing to do with the killing of Dabholkar: Sanatan Sanstha City police to help Pune cops in probe
Sanatan Sanstha, the Hindu right-wing group often at loggerheads with Narendra Dabholkar on Wednesday sought to distance itself from the anti-superstition activist's killing. It first took an offensive stand that what happened to Dabholkar was a result of his own deeds and later backtracked saying that linking their name with the murder is mischievous.
Mumbai: A team of Mumbai Police Crime Branch will provide assistance to Pune police in probing the murder of noted social and anti-superstition activist Narendra Dabholkar which has sent shock waves through the State.
"A six-member team, headed by a police inspector, was dispatched to aid Pune Crime Branch team, investigating the murder case of Dabholkar," a senior Crime Branch official told PTI.
The Mumbai police team was focusing on the technical investigation, besides evaluating the sketch of one of the two suspects, the official said.
"The squad is proficient in analysing the phone call records. Not only Dabholkar's telephone and mobile phone call records are being verified but also the calls gathered by the Pune police as part of the probe," he said.
The team was also assisting the Pune police in assessing the sketch of the suspect, he added.
69-year-old Dabholkar, who headed the 'Andhashraddha Nirmulan Samiti' (anti-superstition movement), was out on a morning walk in Pune on Tuesday when two motorcycleborne unidentified assailants shot him dead.
"We are shocked by Dabholkar's murder...We don't have anything to do with the killing," Sanatan spokesperson Abhay Vartak told reporters here.
Sanatan Sanstha gave advertisements in Pune-based Marathi newspaper and said that birth and death are predestined things and everybody gets fruits of their deeds.
Dabholkar was shot dead by two unidentified assailants while he was out on a morning walk in Pune on Tuesday. Conceding that Dabholkar did "commendable" work, Vartak said, "We had differences with his ideology, not with him as an individual."
“Dabholkar was against our belief that God is all
pervasive and that only His will reigns supreme," he said.
Reacting to media reports, Vartak said, "We never said that we will do another Gandhi (kill Dabholkar like Godse did the Mahatma)."
Appealing to media and people "not to make Sanatan a scapegoat," Vartak said, "Tomorrow anyone will come and place a bomb in order to trap us."
"We work in a spiritual field. It was an ideological struggle (with Dabholkar). We did not have any personal enmity with him," Vartak said.
A Sanatan functionary present at the media briefing alleged that Dabholkar's Andrashradda Nirmulan Samiti got foreign donations.