Former cop arrested in RTI activist murder case

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Wednesday arrested a retired police officer in a case related to the murder of a Pune-based RTI activist Satish Shetty in 2009.

Bhausaheb Andhalkar, the accused, was then a police inspector attached to crime branch of Pune rural police, and was a part of the murder investigation, which had led to the arrest of some suspects. But the police failed to make any further progress and the Maharashtra government later transferred the case to the central probe agency.

“During the investigation, it has emerged that then police inspector (Andhalkar)...had allegedly conspired with others and fabricated and manipulated evidence to shield the real conspirators and killers,” a CBI release stated.

After filing a closure report in a local court in August 2014, saying that it could not find any prosecutable evidence against the suspects, the CBI in early 2015 reopened the probe in view of new evidence recovered in searches at the premises of IRB Infrastructure in Pune and Mumbai.

It had carried out the searches at 21 locations to probe allegations of land grabbing along the Mumbai-Pune Highway on the directions of the Bombay high court.

Following the searches, the Shetty case was reopened.

Shetty, who had unearthed many land-related scams in Pune using the Right To Information (RTI) Act, was stabbed to death by unidentified persons, while on a morning walk near his house in Talegaon-Dabhade in the district on January 13, 2010.