Five days after arresting a retired police officer in the 2010 murder case of Pune-based RTI activist Satish Shetty, the CBI has arrested another former police sub inspector (PSI) in connection with the case.
The accused, Namdev Kauthale, who was a sub-inspector with local crime branch (LCB), when the murder took place in January 2010, was arrested by the central probe agency late last evening, a CBI officer said.
Kauthale was subordinate to B R Andhalkar, a police inspector with LCB at the time of Shetty's murder and who was arrested on April 6 by the CBI. Kauthale had retired as Assistant police inspector (API) in 2013.
"Kauthale was arrested by CBI late last evening and was produced before a local court here today that remanded him in CBI custody till April 16," investigating officer of the central probe agency, Vijay Kumar Shukla, said.
Andhalkar is the first suspect arrested in the case since CBI reopened the case in early 2015. Andhalkar was part of the Shetty murder case investigation, which had led to the arrest of some suspects.
Citing the same reasons on which Andhalkar's remand was sought, CBI argued in the court that complicity of the accused (Kauthale) emerged during further investigation and his custodial interrogation is necessary to "unearth" the larger conspiracy behind murder.
According to CBI, Andhalkar was arrested after it had emerged that he had allegedly "conspired with others and fabricated and manipulated evidence to shield the real conspirators and killers".
Shetty was murdered in Pune by unidentified assailants when he had stepped out of his house for morning walk at Talegaon Dabhade town in Pune district on January 13, 2010. He had been attacked with swords.
A year before he was killed, Shetty had reportedly lodged a complaint with Pune police about an alleged land scam involving IRB chairman Virendra Mhaiskar.
After filing a closure report in local court in August 2014 saying that it could not find any prosecutable evidence against the suspects, CBI in early 2015 reopened the probe in view of new evidence recovered in searches in Pune and Mumbai.
The CBI had carried out the searches at 21 locations to probe allegations of land grabbing along the Mumbai-Pune Highway on the directions of the Bombay High Court. The case had been reopened following the searches.
