Suspects held for murder of varsity guard being probed for Dabholkar killing,says defence lawyer

The police have told the court that Nagori and his aides have sold 47 illegal firearms to criminals.

The Pune police on Monday produced four suspects Manish Nagori 24,an arms dealer,Rahul Mali 21,Vilas Khandelwal 22 and Santosh Bagade 22 before a magistrate court for extension of their custody. While the suspects are being produced for the alleged murder of a University of Pune security guard Prahlad Jogdandkar on May 3,2012,the defence lawyer in the case,B A Aloor,claimed in court that the police were probing the accused for anti-superstition activist Narendra Dabholkars murder.

He said the suspects have been in police custody for the last 10 days,during which the investigators maintained,albeit never on record,that they were being probed for Dabholkars murder.

The police say the suspects are not cooperating. It is surprising that despite a custody of 10 days,the police are unable to progress in their investigation. The police are telling the court that they are probing the murder in the university but they are actually investigating them for Dabholkars murder, he argued.

The court,however,replied that the hearing was not related to the Dabholkar case and extended the suspects police custody by two days till December 11. The court also maintained that only the remand report and the case diary will be looked into.

Meanwhile,Ramvilas,father of suspect Manish Nagori,said,My son is neither involved in the Dabholkar case nor in the murder of the security guard. He was first arrested by Thane crime branch,then by ATS and now by Pune police. He has been in custody for over 50 days now. He should not be framed in the Dabholkar murder case.

Khandelwals father Ramavtar said his son was picked up by the Thane police on August 20 and so it was not possible that he was involved in Dabholkars murder.

Without linking the suspects to Dabholkar case,Pune police commissioner Gulabrao Pol said that the gang is being probed. Police sources said they are probing whether firearms supplied by the suspects were used for murdering Dabholkar. We have questioned several criminals,including illegal fire arms dealers as a part of our investigation, sources said.

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The police have told the court that Nagori and his aides have sold 47 illegal firearms to criminals in different parts of the state and investigation is on to know the details of the persons who bought them.