By Scroll Staff
The Bombay High Court on Wednesday granted bail to Sharad Kalaskar, one of the convicts in the murder of anti-superstition activist Narendra Dabholkar, Live Law reported.
A bench of Justices Ajay Gadkari and Ranjitsinha Bhonsale also expressed doubts about the manner in which the Central Bureau of Investigation secured his identification by witnesses, the Hindustan Times reported.
Dabholkar, who was the founder of the Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti, was shot dead in Pune in August 2013. In May 2024, a special court in Pune convicted Kalaskar, along with another man Sachin Andure, for the murder and sentenced them to life imprisonment.
Two others – Virendrasingh Tawade, Vikram Bhave and Sanjeev Punalekar – were acquitted.
The judgement was pronounced after a trial that lasted almost three years.
Subsequently, Dabholkar’s daughter filed an appeal in the High Court against the acquittal of Tawade, Bhave and Punalekar, The Hindu reported. Additionally, Kalaskar moved the High Court against his conviction and also sought bail till the appeal is disposed of.
On Wednesday, a division bench of Justices AS Gadkari and RR Bhosale suspended the life sentence imposed on Kalaskar by a Pune sessions court and granted him bail, observing that the prosecution’s case relied heavily on unreliable witnesses. The court also took into account Kalaskar’s long incarceration of more than eight years.
The High Court also directed him to furnish a bail bond of Rs 50,000. The judges also declined to allow a petition filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation, which is investigating the case, to stay the bail order for four weeks.
“Since we have already raised doubts over the identity of the applicant Kalaskar as the assailant, there is no question of staying this order,” Live Law quoted the bench as saying.
This story was originally published in scroll.in. Read the full story here.
