Bombay HC suspends life sentence of Dabholkar murder convict Sachin Andure, grants bail

The Bombay High Court suspended the life sentence of Sachin Andure, convicted in rationalist Narendra Dabholkar's 2013 murder, and granted him bail. The court termed the evidence against him extremely weak, citing delayed eyewitness identification and unresolved questions over weapon recovery

Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Tuesday suspended the life sentence of Sachin Andure, a convict in the 2013 murder case of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar, and granted him bail, stating that the evidence against him was “extremely weak” and may eventually lead to his acquittal.

A bench of Justices Sarang Kotwal and Ranjitsinha Bhonsale noted that eyewitnesses identified Andure after a gap of eight years and pointed to loose ends regarding the recovery of the weapon used in the crime. “The applicant is in custody based on a weak piece of evidence for about six years from the arrest in this case and hence, deserves to be released on bail,” the judgment said.

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The court ordered Andure to furnish a personal bond of Rs 50,000. Dabholkar, 67, the founder of the Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti, an anti-superstition organisation, was shot dead by two motorcycle-borne assailants while on a morning walk in Pune on August 20, 2013.

Initially, the local police probed the case, but following a petition filed in the HC by his daughter Mukta Dabholkar, the investigation was handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in 2014.

The prosecution had claimed that Andure was one of the shooters.
On May 10, 2024, a sessions court convicted Andure and Sharad Kalaskar for Dabholkar’s murder, sentencing them to life in prison. They were, however, acquitted of charges under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and the Arms Act.

Terming testimonies in the case as “extremely weak”, the high court, in its order, noted that the two eyewitnesses in the case had identified Andure for the first time nearly eight years after the shooting, which is quite a long period for identification.

There is also a loose end regarding the recovery of the weapon used in the murder, and the ballistic expert’s opinion, it said. The bench further observed that there were fair chances of Andure’s acquittal, as the evidence against him was very weak, even prima facie, without in-depth analysis.

Andure, who is also facing trial in connection with the killing of activist Govind Pansare, can walk out of jail now as he has secured bail in both the cases. The court had earlier acquitted Virendra Singh Tawde, Sanjiv Punalekar and Vikram Bhave in the Dabholkar murder case, citing insufficient evidence.

Andure had filed an appeal in the high court challenging the conviction and, in an interim application, sought bail and suspension of his life sentence. The HC allowed this application on Tuesday.
Dabholkar’s daughter Mukta had also filed an appeal challenging the acquittals in the case and the exclusion of UAPA charges against Andure and Kalaskar. She alleged in her plea that the murder was part of a larger conspiracy by right-wing extremists.

Dabholkar’s murder was the first in a chain of similar killings of three other rationalists and activists – Govind Pansare in Kolhapur in February 2015, Kannada-language scholar MM Kalburgi in Dharwad in August 2015, and journalist Gauri Lankesh in Bengaluru in September 2017.