Decade after Pansare murder, kin await justice

Ten years after Govind Pansare's assassination, his family seeks justice as investigations remain incomplete and the masterminds untraced.

Ten years ago, on February 16, 2015, writer and trade union activist Govind Pansare and his wife Uma were walking back from their breakfast at a local shop near their Kolhapur home when two bike-borne men overtook them and opened fire at the couple. Pansare died of his injuries four days later at Mumbai’s Breach Candy Hospital while his wife was left partially paralysed.

Decade after Pansare murder, kin await justice

Pansare’s death followed the assassination of fellow rationalist Narendra Dabholkar in Pune on August 20, 2013, and was followed by the murders, in a similar fashion, of Sahitya Akademi Award winner MM Kalburgi at Dharwad on August 30, 2015 and writer publisher Gauri Lankesh at Bengaluru on September 5, 2017. These four assassinations in a span of five years inflicted a body blow to India’s rationalist movement. In each of the murders—despite the apparently common modus operandi and certain common accused—the investigations have been done by different agencies resulting in a lack of coordination and delay, allege families.

“The two absconding shooters in my father-in-law’s murder, Sarang Akolkar and Vinay Pawar, are yet to be caught despite they being identified by my mother-in-law before the Maharashtra police’s Special Investigation Team (SIT),” says Pansare’s daughter-in-law Dr Megha Pansare who teaches at Shivaji University in Kolhapur.

“Those who approved of the killings of Comrade Pansare and three other rationalists in Maharashtra and Karnataka, as part of a larger conspiracy, are yet to be identified,” adds Megha Pansare, citing a Pune court’s order which convicted the two shooters who killed Dabholkar but also underscored that the two men were just hired gunmen and not the actual conspirators.

“So, who are these masterminds and planners? And when will they get identified?” asks Megha Pansare.

On Thursday, to mark ten years of the murder, retired Bombay high court judge BG Kolse-Patil will deliver a lecture in Kolhapur, titled, ‘When will Pansare get justice?’

Pansare’s murder has so far been probed by three Maharashtra police units ---Kolhapur’s Rajarampuri police station, the SIT and the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) . Ten accused were arrested and charge sheeted in the case by the SIT and are on trial in a Kolhapur court at present. However, Pansare’s family contends that the probe remains “incomplete” and is yet to account for all those who were involved in the planning and execution of the crime. Pansare’s two bike-borne shooters are yet to be traced and their weapons and the vehicles they used to get away are yet to be seized, says his daughter-in-law.

Megha Pansare, who has been in regular touch with the families of other slain rationalists, says that like Dabholkar’s daughter did earlier in her father’s case, they too will approach the Supreme Court with a Special Leave Petition (SLP) against a January 2, 2025 order of the Bombay high court. The HC order said that the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad has submitted that their probe is essentially complete, barring the unfinished task of catching Pansare’s killers, and in such a situation, it was no longer “necessary” for the court to monitor the probe.

In June 2024, the Pansare family’s lawyer sent the Maharashtra ATS a 29-page written submission alleging that there was an organised crime syndicate comprising individuals such as Dr Virendra Tawade that needed to be investigated for their suspected role in the conspiracy to kill the four rationalists and also the ATS’s own 2018 Nala Sopara arms seizure case. (It was while investigating that 2018 arms case that ATS detained two men, Sharad Kalaskar and Sachin Andure, who eventually confessed to having killed Dabholkar and were convicted in May 2024. The two men are also accused in the Pansare case but are not the men identified by Pansare’s wife.)

Virendra Tawade, an ENT surgeon, was arrested from an ashram at Panvel run by the Sanatan Sanstha in June 2016 by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The CBI contended that he was the mastermind of Dabholkar’s 2013 murder and months later, the Maharashtra SIT probing Pansare’s killing also took his custody to probe his suspected role as the mastermind. But Tawade was acquitted in the Dabholkar killing due to lack of evidence against him in May 2024. His bail application in the Pansare murder is scheduled to be heard by the Bombay high court soon. On January 29 this year, the Bombay high court also granted bail to six other accused in the Pansare murder.

To be sure, the Sanatan Sanstha has repeatedly refuted allegations levelled against it. The Sanstha’s spokesperson Chetan Rajhans said that the Sanstha was a spiritual organisation and had no connection with any unlawful activity, crime or organised crime syndicate. “The Pansare family’s allegations against Sanatan Sanstha are just theories, propaganda to defame us. Pansare’s death causes us pain, but the Pansare family is using his death to defame us. The probe in the Pansare case is a frame-up,” he said.

Pansare’s family isn’t convinced.

“I have round-the-clock security given by the Maharashtra government but what about the security of the witnesses of the killing?” asks Megha Pansare. There cannot be any closure for the family as long as actual shooters and the mastermind remain untraceable, she said.

For their part, the ATS-appointed special prosecutor Ashok Mundargi told the Bombay high court, “All allegations made by the petitioners have been investigated in detail.” Apart from tracing two absconding accused, he said the investigation “has been completed from all angles.” The ATS also submitted its investigation report to the HC in a sealed envelope after which the court decided that it would no longer be monitoring the probe. Conversely, Megha Pansare points out, that while granting bail to six of the accused the Bombay high court had held that there was no satisfactory progress in the trial and the unlikelihood of it being concluded anytime soon.

Justice Anil Kilor, while granting bail, had ruled that the prosecution was mainly relying on the statement of one witness, Sagar Lakhe, and which was recorded three-and-a-half years after the alleged meeting, wherein a conspiracy was allegedly hatched to kill Pansare. “The whole case of the prosecution is based on circumstantial evidence… and there is no prima facie direct evidence,” the bench said.

At present, there are 231 witnesses in the Pansare case but only 28 have been examined by the prosecution so far.

In its written representation to the Maharashtra ATS, the Pansare family highlighted three aspects allegedly common between the murders of the four rationalists and the Nalasopara arms haul case: one, nine of the 12 accused in the Pansare murder case were named as accused in at least one other rationalist’s murder or the Nala Sopara arms’ haul. Two, two weapons were used to kill the four rationalists, and each weapon was used in at least two of the murders. And three, the trial court which convicted two shooters in the Dabholkar murder case in May this year categorically mentioned that they were not the masterminds.

While the Maharashtra ATS has yet to file a charge sheet in the wider conspiracy to kill the rationalists, the SIT probing Pansare’s murder has so far filed five charge sheets against the accused and it had also said that the alleged trigger for Pansare’s murder was because he organised a lecture titled ‘Who killed Karkare?’ at Kolhapur in December 2014. At that lecture, Pansare had announced that he would hold 150 protests across Maharashtra against certain “right wing outfits.”

When contacted by HT, Sanatan Sanstha refuted all allegations levelled against it by the Pansare family. When asked whether Pansare’s alleged shooters Akolkar and Pawar were Sanatan followers, Rajhans said, “Sarang and Vinay were Sanatan sadhaks in Pune, but they have not been heard or seen since 2009 as far as we are concerned.” ATS superintendent of police Jayant Meena refused to comment on the case.