Pune Crime Files: Where is Sarang Akolkar, Sanatan Santha member named in Goa blast, Dabholkar murder probe?

He co-ordinated several campaigns launched by the HJS in Pune, including one in June 2009 against the Oscar-winning movie Slumdog Millionaire, claiming that the film showed Hindus in a bad light. A resident of Shaniwar Peth, he was visible during various public meetings and press conferences of the Sanatan Sanstha and HJS.

Link to 2009 Goa blast

As per police records, the Sanatan Sanstha was opposed to a Narkasur effigy competition in Goa’s Madgaon. On October 16, 2009, the eve of Diwali, its members Malgonda Patil and Yogesh Naik, then residing in Goa, were allegedly carrying a bomb on a scooter to plant it near the competition venue when it exploded prematurely, leading to their death.

The police arrested six Sanatan Sanstha members in connection with the blast, while Akolkar, Rudra Patil of Sangli, and Jay Prakash alias Anna of Mangalore were named wanted accused and continue to remain on the run. The probe was later taken over by the National Investigation Agency (NIA).

As per the submission made by the police before the court, Akolkar was among the suspects, including Malgonda and Yogesh, who had allegedly “prepared IEDs” and conducted “test blasts” on the hill behind the house of one Laxmikant Naik in Talaulim village of Goa between “August 26 and 28, 2009.”

The NIA however received a major setback as a special court in Mapusa, Goa, acquitted all the six arrested accused in December 2013.

The police, however, point out that it is a fact that a bomb blast took place and those linked to the Sanatan Sanstha died in the blast. The investigators also claimed to have records of phone calls between Akolkar and the co-accused on the day of the blast and even before.

Lawyers representing the accused, however, said that the investigation was false and that all the allegations against the Sanatan Sanstha members were baseless. Meanwhile, the search for Akolkar and the other wanted accused continued. An Interpol notice was also issued against him.

Narendra Dabholkar’s murder
Even though Akolkar remained untraceable, his name cropped up in the murder investigation of rationalist and activist Dr Narendra Dabholkar. The founder of the Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmulan Samiti (ANIS), Dabholkar was shot dead on the VR Shinde Bridge in Pune on August 20, 2013, when he was out for a morning walk.

In January 2014, the Pune city police launched a probe and arrested alleged illegal firearms dealer Manish Nagori and his aide Vilas Khandelwal. Meanwhile, investigators claimed that a ballistic examination of one of the firearms seized from them following their arrest by the ATS in October 2013 suggested that it matched the “markings” on a cartridge seized from the Dabholkar murder spot in Pune.

The CBI took over the probe in this case in June 2014, but never hinted at the involvement of Nagori and Khandelwal. Meanwhile, Communist leader Govind Pansare was shot dead in Kolhapur while he was on a morning walk with his wife Uma on February 16, 2015. The murder bore similarities with Dabholkar’s killing.

During the investigation, the CBI recorded the statement of Sanjay Arun Sadvilkar, a Kolhapur-based artisan who was a witness in the Govind Pansare murder case. Based on Sadvilkar’s statement, the CBI arrested a Sanatan Sanstha seeker (sadhak) and ENT surgeon Dr Virendrasinh Tawade in the Dabholkar murder case on June 10, 2016.

In September 2016, the CBI filed a chargesheet against Tawade, naming Sarang Akolkar and another Sanatan Sanstha seeker Vinay Pawar as the two assailants who shot Dabholkar.

This chargesheet claimed that Tawade and Akolkar had a meeting with Sadvilkar in 2013. It is stated that Tawade allegedly wanted to manufacture weapons with Sadvilkar’s help and “Akolkar had for this purpose brought samples of one country-made pistol and one country-made revolver of high quality.”

In his statement to the CBI, Sadvilkar described how Tawade allegedly demanded “chocolates”, referring to bullets, to be used for the pistol and revolver shown by Akolkar. The CBI also stated in the chargesheet that Tawade allegedly conspired with Pawar and Akolkar to kill Dabholkar “owing to the ideological differences between ANIS and Sanatan Sanstha”. The CBI had also issued sketches of Akolkar and Pawar and announced a reward of Rs 5 lakh to anybody giving information about the suspects.

But the CBI later contradicted its own claim and named Hindutva activists Sachin Prakashrao Andure and Sharad Kalaskar, arrested in August 2018, as the two men who had opened fire at Dabholkar.

The CBI chargesheeted Andure, Kalaskar and three others and the trial in this case is on before a special court in Pune even as no information is available on Akolkar’s whereabouts.