Sangli custodial death: Victim’s kin try to immolate self over shoddy probe

Ashish and Amit Kothale, brothers of Aniket Kothale, who was killed in Sangli while in police custody, tried to immolate themselves in front of the police station on Tuesday afternoon. The brothers did so to express their discontent regarding the on-going investigation by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) in the case of murder of their 26-year-old brother who was arrested under the suspicion of robbery when he was killed, according Ashish Kothale.

Shrikant Pathak, superintendent of police, CID, visited Sangli and met Ashish and Amit Kothale to answer their questions. However, the Kothale brothers were not satisfied with the answers SP Pathak had to offer.

Blaming chief minister Devendra Fadnavis for not paying attention to the case, Ashish Kothale said, “He has time to go for inaugurations, he has time to meet DySP Deepali Kale, he visits a place few kilometres from Sangli but has no time to take note of our demands. We want a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) inquiry in the case since CID is botching-up the investigation.”

When asked for the reason behind his stance against the CID, Ashish said, “I just met SP (CID) Shrikant Pathak from CID and he clearly told me that the CID is only looking into the happenings after Aniket was killed. He asked me to repeat things that I have been speaking about all along. I asked him about the DNA report, he said that he has to go to Pune and look into the matter. The Inspector General and CID are pushing the investigation of events which led to my brother’s death on each other. It has been 22 days and they have no convincing for us. How are we supposed to maintain silence against this apathy? They are fooling us into believing that the investigation is progressing.”

The deceased man’s wife Sandhya, his three-year-old daughter Pranjal and mother Alka were also present when the self-immolation was attempted. Deputy superintendent of police Mukund Kulkarni of CID, who is investigating the case, tried to appease the enraged family members after the Sangli city police stopped them from setting fire to their kerosene-doused selves.