Four years after Right to Information activist Satish Shetty was brutally murdered outside his home in Talegaon, the Central Bureau of Investigation on Monday, submitted the closure report in the case, naming no killers and sparking shock and disbelief among RTI activists.
After a byzantine, drawn-out investigation and a chargesheet running into more than 10,000 pages, the CBI submitted the report at the Wadgaon Maval court, 45 km from Pune.
“I am utterly crushed…the High Court’s directive had offered me some hope. Despite the succour given me by the CBI’s investigating officer, it is quite obvious that powerful forces have pressurized the agency to submit the closure report, and this at a time when the CBI was on the verge of finishing their investigations,” said a disconsolate Sandeep Shetty, his brother, commenting that “the change in government at the Centre had played a decisive part” in influencing the CBI’s decision.
Mr. Sandeep Shetty said he would appeal to the Bombay High Court.
Last Friday, the High Court had allowed the CBI to re-investigate Mr. Satish Shetty’s complaint of alleged land-grab against Virendra Mhaiskar, chairman and managing director of Mumbai-based Ideal Road Builders (IRB) Infrastructure Developers Limited.
Mr. Shetty had lodged a complaint with the Lonavala city police against 13 people, including Mhaiskar and a sub-registrar, on October 15, 2009, accusing the company and its subsidiary, Aryan Infrastructure Investment Pvt. Ltd., of grabbing government and private land in Maval Taluk by forging documents and manipulating land records.
The IRB group was alleged to have extended huge unsecured loans to Union Minister Nitin Gadkari’s Purti Sugar and Power Pvt Ltd.
The company had scuppered plans to develop a mega township near Kamshet off the Mumbai-Pune Expressway after it came under the scanner for its alleged involvement in Mr. Shetty’s murder, who was hacked to death by assailants on January 13, 2010.
The case was transferred to the CBI on April 6, 2010 after Mr. Sandeep Shetty moved the High Court.
The agency’s stunning volte face has outraged activists.
“It is incredible that after interrogating nearly 900 persons, conducting several polygraph tests and even arresting some suspects, the CBI has simply shut the case. What justice and security is there for common people in such a climate?” said city-based RTI activist Vijay Kumbhar.
