CBI chargesheets silent on seized firearms, defence lawyer tells court

PUNE: Defence lawyer Virendra Ichalkaranjikar on Tuesday told the special UAPA court that the two chargesheets of the CBI in the rationalist Narendra Dabholkar murder case were silent on what happened to the firearms recovered earlier from two suspects Manish Nagori and Vikas Khandelwal.

Asking whether the firearms were used for the murder or not, he argued that the CBI’s charges of criminal conspiracy against the arrested Mumbai lawyer Sanjiv Punalekar and his assistant, Vikram Bhave, for abetting the two shooters — Sharad Kalaskar and Sachin Andure — fell flat because the ballistic expert had given a report that one of the firearms seized earlier were used for opening fire on Dabholkar.
Ichalkaranjikar submitted that the firearms were seized in 2013 and Punalekar had allegedly advised Kalaskar to destroy the pistols used to kill Dabholkar in June/July 2018.
Ichalkaranjikar will continue with his arguments on June 17, while the CBI filed its say for opposing the bail pleas of Punalekar and Bhave.
Opening his arguments before the special judge, R M Pande, Ichalkaranjikar read out excerpts that the CBI had initially named Sarang Akolkar and Vinay Pawar as the alleged shooters responsible for killing Dabholkar in the chargesheet filed against Panvel’s ENT doctor Virendrasinh Tawde. He then read out the supplementary chargesheet filed by the CBI naming Kalaskar and Andure as the shooters involved in killing Dabholkar and questioned the claims made by the agency in the chargesheets.
He relied on an affidavit filed by the Pune police saying the anti-extortion cell of the Thane police had arrested Nagori and Khandelwal and had recovered firearms from them at Mumbra within hours after Dabholkar was shot dead on August 20, 2013.
He argued that the CBI on April 29, 2016, had obtained permission from the Kolhapur court and sent the firearms recovered from Nagori and Khandelwal in the murder cases of Dabholkar and Govind Pansare to the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) in Bengaluru. It was suspected that the firearms were also used for killing rationalist M Kalburgi. The FSL gave a report that different firearms were used in the murders.
He pointed out that the CBI chargesheets nowhere stated what happened to the seized pistols and if the FSL reports were true. The agency, after arresting, Kalaskar had failed to recover portions of the dismantled firearms from the Mumbai creek, where he had allegedly dumped them for destroying evidence.
He said the allegation levelled on Punalekar that he had instructed Kalaskar to destroy the firearms was false and baseless because the latter never stated in his confessional statement that the lawyer was involved in the conspiracy to kill Dabholkar. Ichalkaranjikar said the act of a lawyer to give advice to his client (Kalaskar) was a privileged communication and he might have exceeded certain limitations, but it did not mean he was a conspirator.
He said Punalekar was entitled to seek bail as the allegations levelled against him were covered under Section 201 (causing disappearance of evidence) of IPC — a bailable offence.