Mumbai: The CBI has arrested a former Shiv Sena councillor from Jalna in connection with the August 2013 murder of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar in Pune, apparently on the basis of a "confession" by suspected shooter Sachin Prakasrao Andure.
Shrikant Pangarkar, 40, was detained on Saturday night after Andure allegedly told his CBI interrogators that the ex-councillor was riding pillion on his motorbike when he shot Dabholkar. He was arrested on Sunday night under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, used regularly in terror cases.
Pangarkar was twice a corporator with the Jalna Municipal Corporation and is president of the local branch of the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti, an arm of the Goa-headquartered Sanatan Sanstha.
The Sanstha has been linked to the murders of Dabholkar, fellow rationalists M.M. Kalburgi and Govind Pansare, and journalist Gauri Lankesh in Maharashtra and Karnataka between 2013 and 2017.
Both the BJP and the Shiv Sena had opposed as "anti-Hindu" Dabholkar's movement for a law against superstition and black magic, which the then Congress-NCP government in Maharashtra enacted after his murder.
Assailants on two motorbikes had shot Dabholkar in Pune on August 20, 2013 - exactly five years from Monday- while he was taking a morning walk.
Andure was arrested from Aurangabad on Saturday evening after one of three terror suspects arrested by the Maharashtra anti-terrorist squad earlier this month allegedly implicated him.
Sharad Kalaskar - accused of plotting terror attacks across Maharashtra with two other Hindu radicals - allegedly said he and Andure had shot Dabholkar from their two motorbikes.
Andure had received "shooting training" at various places in Maharashtra and Karnataka, the CBI told a Pune court, which on Sunday remanded him in the agency's custody till August 26.
Defence counsel Prakash Salsingkar claimed his client was innocent, saying the CBI chargesheet of January 2017 did not mention Andure and named Sarang Akolkar and Vinay Pawar, who are in hiding, as the killers,
He said the CBI had claimed that its sketches of the duo, prepared after talking to seven or eight eyewitnesses, resembled photographs of Akolkar and Pawar the agency had later obtained.
"Now, suddenly, the CBI has come out with this new theory that it was Andure who shot at Dabholkar. The sketches have no resemblance with Andure's facial characteristics," he said. But CBI counsel Vijaykumar Dhakane said the agency had never named Akolkar and Pawar as the main killers and that the chargesheet only mentioned that the sketches resembled them. "The resemblance is only 50 to 60 per cent," he said.
Dhakane said the CBI needed to question Andure to find out where he had undergone shooting training and who had provided logistical support to the killers.
In June 2016, the agency had arrested ENT specialist Virendra Tawde, a member of the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti, from Panvel in Navi Mumbai and named him as the main conspirator in the chargesheet. He is out on bail.
Kalaskar had been arrested along with Vaibhav Raut and Sudhanva Gondhalekar in connection with an alleged "Hindu terror" conspiracy.