The Bombay High Court on Wednesday granted bail to Sharad Kalaskar, one of the militants convicted of the 2013 killing of rationalist Dr Narendra Dabholkar in Pune, expressing doubts over the manner in which the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) was able to secure his identity from witnesses.
A division bench of Justices AS Gadkari and RR Bhosale stayed the life sentence imposed by the Pune Sessions Court on Kalaskar and granted him bail, stating that the prosecution case relied heavily on unreliable witnesses. The court also took into account the long imprisonment that Kalaskar had served for more than eight years.
Dabholkar, founder of Maharashtra Andashraddha Nirmulan Samiti, was shot dead on August 20, 2013, during a morning walk in Pune. He was a key figure in lobbying for state government anti-superstition legislation. Organizations like Sanatan Sanstha and fraternal groups were said to have opposed the bill, and were also accused of spreading hatred against Dabholkar over ideological differences.
The crime was initially registered at Deccan Police Station in Pune before the investigation was transferred to the CBI. According to the prosecution, the killing was carried out by two assailants on a motorcycle, later identified as Kalaskar and Sachin Indoor, both of whom were allegedly associated with the Sanstha. Kalaskar was arrested on September 3, 2018, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment on May 10, 2024 by a Pune trial court.
In January 2025, six other accused, Sachin Indoor, Ganesh Miskin, Amit Digvekar, Amit Padhi, Bharat Kuran and Vasudev Suryavanshi, were granted bail on the basis of long imprisonment and the lack of likelihood of the trial concluding in the near future.
Of the 12 defendants identified in the case, nine have been arrested so far, with four supplementary indictments filed. While the trial of these nine defendants is ongoing, two of the alleged shooters remain at large.
During the hearing, senior advocate Nitin Pradhan and advocate Shobhada Khot, representing Kalaskar, said he was named as an attacker only in a later chargesheet filed in 2019 without “any good and convincing reason”. They also claimed that no Test of Identification (TIP) was conducted, thus undermining the evidentiary value of his identification under the Indian Evidence Act. According to the defence, Kalaskar was identified on the basis of photographs shown to witnesses when he was already in custody.
In opposing the petition, Special Public Prosecutor Amit Munde, representing the CBI, contended that the prosecution relied heavily on eyewitness accounts. He said that identification through photographs does not in itself invalidate evidence. “Even if human trafficking is carried out through display of images, there is no harm to the case for prosecution,” he said.
But the court pointed out that there were contradictions in the testimony of the main witnesses, noting that they claimed to have witnessed the accident from balconies located about 500 meters away. It further observed that since the prosecution had tried to establish Kalaskar’s identity by showing his photographs to witnesses while he was already in custody, “the identity loses its sanctity.”
