Narendra Dabholkar murder: Virendra Tawade scoured for ‘chocolates’

Dr Virendra Tawade, who is a member of a right-wing group, had allegedly begun preparing to target rationalist Dr Narendra Dabholkar in April 2013 in Kolhapur, around four months before two bike-borne assailants shot Dabholkar dead in Pune in August of the same year. So says the case chargesheet that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has prepared.

According to the chargesheet, Tawade had allegedly begun scouring for ‘chocolates’ — a code word for cartridges — and a unit to manufacture country-made firearms in Kolhapur since April 2013, along with two other men who were identified as Dabholkar’s suspected assailants. The CBI chargesheet, which was recently submitted in a Pune court, named Tawade as an accused, charging him with offences related to criminal conspiracy read with murder. A Kolhapur-based man — who was allegedly contacted several times by Tawade and the other two suspects for the cartridges and firearms — subsequently deposed against the three men in his witness statement given to a court, said a government source familiar with the case.

According to the chargesheet, a senior functionary of a subsidiary organisation of the right-wing group had allegedly tasked Tawade in July 2007 — via an email that was subsequently seized by the CBI in June 2016 — to drop all assignments and instead focus only on opposing the Andhshraddha Nirmulan Bill-2005 that Dabholkar was piloting. Tawade had then allegedly withdrawn from all overt activities in Kolhapur and resurfaced there again in April 2013, said the chargesheet.

When contacted by The Asian Age, Abhay Vartak, the spokesperson of the right-wing group, Sanatan Sanstha, denied all the allegations levelled against it by the CBI. “I do not have a copy of the CBI’s chargesheet in the Narendra Dabholkar case, and so I can’t comment,” he said. Mr Vartak added: “But as far as Sanatan Sanstha is concerned, it had no role at all in the Dabholkar case. Sanatan Sanstha denies any allegation that the CBI may have levelled against it in the case. Sanatan Sanstha was openly critical of some of Dabholkar’s views and the Andhshraddha Nirmulan Bill, but that matter is on public record.”

The witness whom Tawade had contacted said the latter had asked him for cartridges for pistols and revolvers around June-July in 2013. The witness added he had used the code word of “chocolates” for the cartridges.

Earlier, in April 2013, Tawade had first met the witness in Kolhapur and subsequently made him meet one of the two case suspects, who has been missing since the Goa blast of 2009.