Narendra Dabholkar. Narendra Dabholkar. OFFICIALS of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) have said the interrogation of those arrested in the Narendra Dabholkar murder case has revealed that the mastermind, Virendra Tawde, used to call other suspects using public pay phones and give them actual instructions in person. The CBI officials have also said that more arrests are likely in the case in the near future. The officials said that they got the information while questioning some of the five suspects arrested by them over the past one month, including Sharad Kalaskar and Sachin Andure, who according to the agency, are the two who shot at Dabholkar on August 20, 2013. Kalaskar, whose CBI custody ended on Monday, was produced in the court of the Judicial Magistrate (First Class) S M A Sayyed on Monday. He has been remanded in magisterial custody for 14 days. Along with Kalaskar and Andure, the CBI has also said that three Hindu Janjagruti Samiti members arrested for the murder of Bengaluru-based journalist Gauri Lankesh in September 2017 — Amol Kale, Amit Digwekar and Rajesh Bangera — were also involved in the conspiracy to murder Dabholkar. Virendra Tawde Virendra Tawde In June 2016, the CBI had arrested Sanatan Sanstha member and ENT surgeon Virendra Tawde in the Dabholkar murder case. The CBI has said that he is the mastermind in the case. While Kale has been named as the key conspirator in the murder case, Bangera, according to the CBI, was the one who trained Andure and Kalaskar to use firearms. A CBI official said: “The interrogation of the recently arrested suspect has given us some important clues about how the suspects coordinated the attack and what the communication was like between them. The contacts were mainly made by Tawde, who used public pay phones to get in touch with the others and decide to meet. But the actual instructions were given only in person during the meetings.” Without giving much details, the officer also said that some more arrests were likely to happen in the coming days. Meanwhile, in the chargesheet filed by the CBI against Tawde in September 2016, the agency had given details of alleged email conversations between Tawde and Sarang Akolkar, another member of the Sanatan Sanstha, who is wanted in the Madgaon bomb blast case of 2009. In the chargesheet, the CBI had named Akolkar and one Vinay Pawar as suspected shooters of Dabholkar, a statement which is now being used as a defence by the lawyers of Andure and Kalaskar. The chargesheet had said: “One email dated April 20, 2009, from Sarang Akolkar to Tawde mentions about the availability of countrymade arms (Deshibanavatiche sahitya) in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. It also mentioned about foreign-made arms’ (Pardeshi sahitya) availability in Assam.” Vinay Pawar from Satara is missing since 2009 and Akolkar, an engineer from Pune, is absconding since October 2009 and a red corner notice has been issued against him. On Monday, after the court remanded Kalaskar in magisterial custody, he was taken back to Arthur Road jail, as he was originally arrested by the Maharashtra ATS in the Nallasopara arms and explosives haul case. For all the latest Pune News, download Indian Express App

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