The Bombay High Court on Friday directed the Chief Secretary-Home, Additional Chief Secretary-Finance, the signatory of status reports filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), and senior officials of the CBI and the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), to convene meetings periodically into the probe of the murder of rationalists Govind Pansare and Narendra Dabholkar.
This was observed by a Division Bench of Justices S.C. Dharmadhikari and B.P. Colabawalla after reports filed by the CBI and the Special Investigation Team (SIT) were provided.
The court said a committee needs to be formed in order to ensure that one person shall be responsible for the matter.
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The court was hearing a clutch of petitions filed by members of the Pansare and Dabholkar families. The CBI SIT is investigating the Dabholkar murder and the State CID is probing the Pansare murder.
Referring to the murder of journalist Gauri Lankesh in 2017, the court said, “When a similar attack was carried out in Karnataka on writer Gauri Lankesh, the police immediately probed and arrested the accused without waiting for court orders or for any petitions to be filed. We do not want Maharashtra to expect court orders to investigate murders.”