The Supreme Court set aside the Bombay High Court order that rejected writ petitions filed by Sandeep Shetty, the brother of RTI activist Satish Shetty from Pune who was murdered in 2010, in which he had sought directions for the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to further investigate the murder case. The SC bench of Justice Abhay Oka and Justice Pankaj Mithal passed an order in this regard on October 19, after hearing a special leave petition (SLP) filed by Sandeep. Satish Shetty had exposed the alleged land scam, in which an offence was registered at Lonavala city police station against 13 persons including chairman of an infrastructure company on October 15, 2009. After Shetty had filed the case, he had started receiving death threats and was murdered on January 13, 2010. Initially, the Pune rural police arrested six persons including advocate Vijay Dabhade from Talegaon in connection with the case. But Satish's family said these were false arrests and as past disputes between him and Dabhade were settled. The CBI took over the investigation in September 2010 and arraigned six persons as accused. They included the CMD of the infra company, its liaison manager, a lawyer working for the company and three police officers of Pune Rural police on the charges of manipulating and fabricating the evidence. The CBI moved Bombay High court on August 8, 2014, seeking permission to re-open the land scam case, saying that it may be linked to the murder. However, just three days after seeking permission to reopen the land scam probe, the CBI filed a closure report in the murder case on August 11, 2014, citing difficulties to prima-facie prove the charges against the accused persons. Meanwhile, in February 2015, the CBI re-opened the murder case, following raids carried out while investigation of the land scam exposed by the RTI activist. In April 2016, CBI had arrested two Pune rural police officers for allegedly conspiring with other accused for “fabricated and manipulated” evidence to shield the real culprits. The central agency even filed chargesheeted against the two policemen who were later released on bail. Meanwhile, in December 2017, the CBI filed a chargesheet against 18 persons including the infra company CMD in connection with the 2009 land scam, the investigation of which it had taken over. The CBI has neither framed charges against the two cops nor against the 18 persons in the land scam case. And, in April 2018, CBI again filed the closure report in the Satish Shetty murder case before a Pune court saying it had found no prosecutable evidence against four out of the six accused persons, including an infra company CMD. The Pune court accepted the report in September 2018. Challenging the Pune court's decision, Sandeep filed writ petitions in Bombay HC seeking directives to the the CBI to investigate the murder case further. But the high court rejected the petition on March 18, 2019. In July 2019, Sandeep filed an SLP in SC challenging the Bombay HC order. The SC has set aside HC order saying that after hearing Sandeep's counsel and the additional solicitor general (ASG) appearing for the Union of India, it is "inclined to send back the writ petitions to the High Court for reconsideration.” “Much is said by the learned senior counsel appearing for the appellant (Sandeep) about the manner in which the writ petitions were taken up and decided by the High Court..we are sure that the High Court will give necessary priority to the hearing of the Writ Petitions,” the SC order stated. Sandeep said, “SC has acknowledged that the way the Bombay HC Judges then decided my writ petitions was not appropriate...I have always believed that my late brother himself is fighting his battle and so after many dead ends that I have encountered like the closure reports and the endless court proceedings , which at times have frustrated me to the extent of giving up, he always finds a way to revive this case. So now I am getting ready for a fresh court battle”.
