In one of the longest pending murder cases in Maharashtra, all accused in the previous murder case of Congress leader Pawanraje Nimbalkar have been acquitted by a special court in Mumbai on Saturday.
Nimbalkar who was at the peak of his political career in Osmanabad (now Dharashiv), was shot dead with his driver, Samad Kazi, near Kalamboli in Navi Mumbai on June 3, 2006. The murder had rocked the Maharashtra political circles, and there was a high-profile probe into the case.
One of those acquitted was to be the former State Home Minister Padamsinh Patil who the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) named as the alleged murder mastermind. The agency had asserted that the conspiracy was being engineered mainly because “county opposition” and worries of Nimbalkar’s growing sway had been the driving force.
As things didn’t go as the Nimbalkars wished with the first police probe, they went in appeal to the Bombay High Court which eventually shifted the matter to the CBI. In 2009, agency had issued a chargesheet against Patil and others as accused.
The trial officially started in 2011, and lasted for almost 15 years. The court in the case heard 128 witnesses, among them noted anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare.
The Special CBI Court after going over huge number of witness statements, documents and arguments presented in the subsequent years, has acquitted all the accused persons. The judgment comes after a legal action that has been a tough stretch for nearly 20 years, but it won’t be immediately tested in a higher court, of likely whether investigative agencies or the victim’s family plan to take the decision to a higher court.