Amid the ongoing trial in the Narendra Dabholkar murder case, defence counsel Virendra Ichalkaranjikar on Tuesday questioned the photo identification of the accused done by the eyewitnesses in the case and also the process of crime reconstruction done by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). Advocate Ichalkaranjikar continued his final arguments in the court of Additional Sessions Judge PP Jadhav on Tuesday. "Today, as part of my continued arguments, I questioned the very legitimacy of the crime reconstruction panchnama cited by the prosecution. For this process, the accused and the witnesses were not taken to the crime scene together, which is the required procedure," said the advocate. He also questioned the photo identification of the accused done by the eyewitnesses. "I argued that the eyewitnesses have said that they find resemblance in the photos they were shown and the suspect they saw at the crime scene. The term resemblance is far from asserting that they were the ones at the crime scene. I also asked that when the accused were present in the prison and the witnesses were available, why did the CBI conduct a photograph-based identification instead of an actual identification parade" Ichalkaranjikar said, "I cited the judgments of the Supreme Court and various High Courts, which make it mandatory for the investigating entity to conduct an identification parade when both accused and witnesses are available. I argued that this discrepancy makes the whole photograph-based identification of the accused inadmissible. I also said the CBI did photo-identification because it knew very well that witnesses could not identify the accused in a test identification parade before the special executive magistrate." Anti-superstition activist and rationalist Dr Narendra Dabholkar was shot dead by two bike-borne assailants on the VR Shinde bridge in Pune on the morning of August 20 in 2013. The prosecution had concluded its final arguments on February 17, seeking maximum punishment for the five accused allegedly linked to the Sanatan Sanstha. The accused who are being tried for murder include ENT surgeon Dr Virendrasinh Tawade, who was chargesheeted in September 2016; the two alleged shooters--Sachin Andure and Sharad Kalaskar--who were chargesheeted in February 2019; a Mumbai-based senior lawyer Sanjeev Punalekar and his aide Vikram Bhave, who were chargesheeted in November 2019.
