Dabholkar, Pansare murder: HC tells CBI to get reports from Scotland Yard in 8 weeks

The Bombay high court on Thursday directed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to obtain within eight weeks the reports of forensic science laboratory of Scotland Yard on evidence in the murder cases of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar, communist leader Govind Pansare and scholar MM Kalburgi.

The court asked the Ministry of External Affairs and the Union Home Ministry to coordinate with other departments to ensure that all permissions are in place for CBI to obtain expeditiously the forensic reports from Scotland Yard.

While Dabholkar and Pansare were killed at different places in Maharashtra, Kalburgi was shot dead in Karnataka. A division Bench headed by Justice SC Dharmadhikari set the time frame of eight weeks as it felt that enough time had been lost in obtaining the opinion of a foreign lab. The court has asked the CBI to procure the reports and present them before it. 

The Bench is hearing a bunch of petitions filed by the families of Dabholkar and Pansare seeking monitoring of probes in both the cases by the High Court.

During investigation, the CBI had noticed a pattern in the killings which indicated that the same group might have been involved as the weapons used in the crime were similar. Hence, the agency sent bullets and empty cartridges it has recovered for forensic analysis.