Nearly four months after noted activist and CPI leader Govind Pansare was shot outside his residence in Kolhapur, the Maharashtra police have finally released the sketches of two suspects.
According to the Kolhapur police, the sketches of the suspected assailants are based on footage obtained just before the shooting as CCTV footage at the time of the killing was unavailable.
Earlier, while the Kolhapur police had prepared sketches based on the testimony of Mr. Pansare’s wife, Uma, the prime eyewitness to the shooting but had delayed releasing them on the ground that she had not fully recovered from her wounds suffered during the shooting.
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At the time, they had said Ms. Pansare, who had suffered a depressed skull fracture, had trouble recalling the sequence of events.
According to Ms. Uma’s testimony, the killers were young men in their twenties, who did not wear masks, spoke in Marathi and were watching their house before she and her husband left for their morning stroll. They were the same men who opened fire after they returned from their walk.
Despite the State announcing a Rs. 25 lakh bounty on Mr. Pansare’s killers, no one, according to investigating agencies, had come forward to provide significant clues.
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While a Special Investigation Team, monitored by the Bombay High Court, has been constituted on the urgings of Mr. Pansare’s kin, communist party leaders and social activists have accused the State machinery of deliberately dragging its feet over the investigation after officers connected with the case were transferred.