SC dismisses plea to reinvestigate assassination of Mahatma Gandhi
Gandhi was gunned down by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu radical, on January 30, 1948 in New Delhi when he was on his way to addressing an evening prayer meeting.
The Supreme Court dismissed a plea seeking re-investigation into the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi and also rejected the four-bullet theory propounded by the petitioner.
School children pay homage to a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi on his 70th death anniversary in Chennai on January 30, 2018. (PTI)
A bench of justices SA Bode and LN Rao also refused to go into the correctness of the findings of the Kapur Commission set up to inquire into the conspiracy behind the assassination, saying it would be another exercise in futility and would “none the less pan new fires for controversy.” “This court must at all cost be wary of such contentious issues and must not allow its jurisdiction to be invoked for such purposes,” the bench said.
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The petition was filed by Mumbai-based Pankaj Phadnis, trustee of a Abhinav Bharat, who had questioned the “three-bullet theory” relied upon by various courts to convict and sentence Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte to death. Phadnis had said there was a need to examine whether there was a fourth bullet and whether someone other than Godse had fired it. Abhinav Bharat is a Hindu revivalist group inspired by Vinayak Savarkar who was named an accused in the assassination of Gandhi but was later acquitted.
Phadnis submitted that the Kapur Commission report brought disrepute to Savarkar and adverse remarks should be expunged.
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