With the police making no headway in the investigation into the >triple murder of a Dalit family in Maharashtra’s Ahmednagar district, the Nationalist Congress Party on Friday demanded a CBI probe.
The NCP also criticised Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis for not visiting the kin of the bereaved.
“This is a grave issue and the new Chief Minister’s conduct has not been promising. He [Devendra] Fadnavis should have paid a visit to the relatives of the murdered family instead of sending Ministers Pankaja Munde and Dilip Kamble to take stock of the situation,” said senior NCP leader and former State Tribal Affairs Minister Madhukar Pichad, who visited the village of Javkhede Khalasa in Pathardi taluk, where the incident took place.
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Castigating the police for their tardiness, Mr. Pichad said that despite labouring for more than a fortnight, eight teams of police personnel had failed to apprehend the suspects.
The dismembered bodies of Sanjay Jadhav, his wife Jayashree and their teenage son, Sunil, were discovered on October 22 by their relatives. The crime, the third such incident against Dalits in the district, sent shockwaves across Maharashtra with several Dalit groups protesting administrative inaction.
“It is high time the police come clean on the possible motives in the case. If the murders are ‘honour killings’, they should present the truth before the public,” said a Dalit leader from Pathardi taluk.
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The day witnessed parallel protests by Ramdas Athawale’s Republican Party of India (A), which called a shutdown of Navi Mumbai, and the Dalit Yuva Aghadi, which staged anti-government protests in Kolhapur district.