This story is from January 22, 2020

Pune: Court denies bail to Vikram Bhave in Narendra Dabholkar murder case

Special UAPA judge S R Navander on Tuesday rejected the second bail plea of Vikram Bhave, who is facing trial for helping the two men accused of shooting veteran rationalist Narendra Dabholkar dead on August 20, 2013, with a recce of the murder spot, escape route and other details.
Pune: Court denies bail to Vikram Bhave in Narendra Dabholkar murder case
Narendra Dabholkar
PUNE: Special UAPA judge S R Navander on Tuesday rejected the second bail plea of Vikram Bhave, who is facing trial for helping the two men accused of shooting veteran rationalist Narendra Dabholkar dead on August 20, 2013, with a recce of the murder spot, escape route and other details.
The judge orally informed the representing lawyers that the plea has been rejected on account of the applicant’s (Bhave) criminal antecedents; the fact that his name has surfaced in the present case while he was out on bail and that there is sufficient incriminating material against him in the instant case.

The court also considered the confessional statement recorded by a co-accused while rejecting Bhave’s plea. A full text of the order is to be released in due course.
“We will move the Bombay high court against the order by the Pune court,” lawyer Sameer Patwardhan, who represented Bhave, told TOI.
In August 2011, a Thane sessions court had convicted and sentenced Bhave to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment in the June 4, 2008, bomb blast at Gadkari Rangayatan (theatre) in that district. Bhave was described in that case as a member of the Sanatan Sanstha. The Bombay HC admitted Bhave’s appeal against conviction and granted him bail in May 2013. He had since joined the office of Mumbai lawyer Sanjiv Punalekar as an assistant.

The CBI arrested Punalekar and Bhave on May 25, 2019, in the Dabholkar murder case on the basis of a confessional statement recorded by Sharad Kalaskar (one of the two men accused of shooting Dabholkar dead) on October 12, 2018 before a Karnataka magistrate during an SIT probe into the murder of journalist-turned-activist Gauri Lankesh in Bengaluru on September 5, 2017.
Kalaskar was arrested in the Dabholkar murder case in August 2018. He is also an accused in the Lankesh murder case.
It is the CBI’s case that Kalaskar confessed in the statement that Punalekar had in June 2018 instructed him to destroy the firearms used in the murders of Dabholkar and Lankesh. Kalaskar also confessed that Bhave had accompanied him and Sachin Andure (the other alleged shooter) for a recce of the scene of crime and showed them the escape route and the place from where they were to pick up the getaway vehicle.
Punalekar is since out on bail granted by the Pune court on July 5, 2019.
On August 17, 2019, then special UAPA judge R M Pande had rejected Bhave’s first bail plea, which was filed before submission of a chargesheet by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
Bhave moved the second bail plea after the filing of the chargesheet. He claimed that the filing of the chargesheet constituted a change in circumstance for consideration of bail relief and it (chargesheet) did not carry any incriminating material against him.
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About the Author
Vishwas Kothari

Vishwas Kothari is a special correspondent at The Times of India, Pune. He covers news relating to the education and aviation sectors in Pune. Vishwas has a degree in Mass Communication from Nagpur University, and has participated in the US Government's International Visitors' (IV) Fellowship Programme on `Urban Environmental Issues' in 2005. He writes on crime, courts and legal jurisprudence, defence and corporate affairs too. He loves sports and movies and gorges on infotainment magazines.

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