AURANGABAD/PUNE: The Aurangabad police on Tuesday night arrested three men from different parts of the city in connection with the Nalasopara arms haul case and the murder of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar. A 7.65mm countrymade pistol was seized from the house of one of the suspects.Investigators are not ruling out the possibility of the seized pistol having been used in the murders of Dabholkar, Communist leader Govind Pansare and scholar M M Kalburgi. All three fell to bullets fired from a pistol of similar make. Besides, state ATS officials in Pune were also verifying if one or more of the firearms seized recently from Nalasopara and Pune were used in the three murders.Confirming the arrests, senior inspector D S Shingare of the City Chowk police station told TOI that the three men — Ajinkya alias Golu Sarule, his cousin Shubham Sarule and Rohit Rege (20) — were arrested under relevant sections of the Arms Act.Earlier, in a joint midnight action which went on till the wee hours of Tuesday, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) rounded up the three men and detained them. Two others who were also detained by the probe agencies were let off after questioning.Incidentally, the two Sarules are related to Sachin Andure, who was arrested by the CBI on August 18 and named as one of the two assailants who shot at Dabholkar on the Vitthal Ramji Shinde bridge near Omkareshwar temple in Pune on August 20, 2013. Ajinkya Sarule is Andure’s brother-in-law. The pistol was seized from Rege’s house in Dhawni mohalla in Aurangabad city. Andure also lived in the same mohalla till he moved out around a year ago.CBI sources confirmed that the pistol and three live rounds were found in a handbag at Rege’s house. Sharp-edged weapons, including a sword, and some other articles were recovered from the Sarules, they said. A police team from Satara in Aurangabad assisted the agencies during the raids.The two suspects who were let off after questioning are Rege’s 14-year-old brother, an SSC student, and a 27-year-old man, who is the only son of a retired MSEDCL official. Ajinkya Sarule and Rege were partying at the 27-year-old’s house. He had agreed to host the party as his parents had gone to Surat.Rege’s mother, who was waiting outside the ATS office while her son was being questioned, told TOI, “Yesterday or the day before, one of Andure’s relatives called my older son and told him that he had kept a handbag on a bicycle that was parked outside our house. My son, who was then not at home, called my younger son and told him to keep the bag in the house. Neither me nor my sons were aware of the contents of the bag. Some officers in plain clothes reached our house around 2am and started a search. They found a firearm in the bag.”Officials from the probe agencies said a forensic examination of the seized pistol will throw some more light. The joint action started when the team reached the 27-year-old’s Manjit Pride Apartments at Deolai Chowk where the party was going on.Meanwhile, the ATS officials verifying details of the arms seized in Nalasopara and Pune said 10 countrymade pistols, a revolver , an air gun, 10 pistol barrels, six pistol bodies, six magazines, three half-finished magazines, seven pistol slides, 16 relay switches, vehicle number plates, trigger mechanism, sharp weapons and handbooks on explosives were seized in Pune on August 11.In another action on August 15, a laptop, two computers, a car, four air pistols, 20 pellets, two notebooks, a diary, three cellphones, two SIM cards and documents were seized from an apartment at Parvati in Pune. The ATS arrested Sudhanva Gondhalekar (39) of Satara (he used to stay in Pune too) and Vaibhav Raut (40) and Sharad Kalaskar (25) of Nalasopara.The trio was arrested after their references were found (in literature) during the interrogation of Amol Kale (48), a resident of Chinchwad . Kale was arrested by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Karnataka police with three others in connection with the Gauri Lankesh murder case, the ATS officer said.“The SIT handed over this incriminating literature to the Maharashtra ATS. Senior officers are carefully scrutinizing it. The information was shared with the CBI, Delhi, and this led to Andure’s arrest,” the officer said. According to the CBI statement in the court, Andure is one of the two shooters in the Dabholkar murder case.

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