There is no substantive material to justify a need to re-investigate the assassination of the Father of the Nation, amicus curiae Amarendra Sharan said in his report to the Supreme Court on Monday.
Seventy years after the assassination on January 30, 1948, the Supreme Court had asked Mr. Sharan to conduct an independent enquiry into the case files and evidence on the basis of a PIL filed by Dr. Pankaj Kumudchandra Phadnis that a fourth bullet was found and there was a British secret service conspiracy to kill the Mahatma.
On the role of Vinayak D. Savarkar in the conspiracy, the amicus report said he was the former president of the Hindu Mahasabha and the “foremost ideologue of the right wing Hindutva philosophy at the relevant time.”
Though Savarkar was acquitted of the charges of conspiracy and no appeal was filed against his acquittal, Mr. Sharan points out that the Justice Jivan Lal Kapur Fact-Finding Commission had analysed evidence and returned a finding that “all these facts taken together were destructive of any theory other than the conspiracy to murder by Savarkar and his group.”
The Supreme Court amicus leaves his enquiries into the alleged role of Mr. Savarkar with the words, “Since the late Vinayak D. Savarkar had been acquitted, at this stage, it would neither be advisable/desirable nor possible to come to a definitive finding with respect to Vinayak D. Savarkar’s role in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.”
The alleged fourth bullet was recovered from Gwalior and not Delhi. The recovery of this bullet was declared inadmissible on the insistence of the defence that it had no connection with the assassination, the report said. There was no documentary evidence to show that a British secret service was tasked with carrying out the murder.
