Three years after the murder of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar in Pune on 20 August 2013, the Central Bureau of Investigation filed the first charge sheet accusing Virendra Tawade of murder and hatching a conspiracy. Tawade, a Panvel-based doctor and member of the Sanatan Sanstha offshoot Hindu Janajagruti Samiti was named a key conspirator and was arrested on 10 June 2016 after investigators discovered coded emails exchanges between him and another senior Sanstha member where they discussed killing Dabholkar.
In our last month’s issue, Anosh Malekar reported on the murders of Dabholkar, Govind Pansare and MM Kalburgi.
On the day [Narendra] Dabholkar was murdered, after the news had broken, the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti, or HJS, a group affiliated to the Sanatan Sanstha, uploaded onto its website a photograph of the activist with a red “X” over his face. The move drew sharp criticism, and the cybercrime cell of the Pune police directed the HJS to take the image down. The matter ended there.
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