Intro: The local Police machinery is still clueless about who killed veteran Communist Party of India leader Govind Pansare.
The communist coterie including self proclaimed messiahs of secularism in media are hell bent upon painting the cruel murder of veteran CPI leader Govind Pansare as the deed of so called right wing chauvinists. And the effort of left wing to derail the police investigations is seemingly showing success as a lot of time is being wasted in interrogating innocent people. Not a single arrest has been made by police, but yes—they have thoroughly investigated innocent social activists.
Efforts to derail investigations
When Maharashtra was stunned by the killings of 82- year- old leftist veteran comrade Govind Pansare in Kolhapur on February 16, the leftists were seen creating noises within half an hour of his being shot, accusing Hindutva groups baselessly. Not a single attempt by any senior politician or social leader to stop the indiscriminate baseless political campaign run by so called reputed journalists to influence police investigations was witnessed. The police called and interrogated two ABVP activists for hours. Their only crime was – they had opposed comrade Pansare's lecture in Pune, which they said was spreading mis-information about Shivaji.
Also there were open protests against a function arranged by Pansare to promote a book titled Who Killed Karkare, alleging Karkare’s killers to be affiliated with Hindutva groups. These types of baseless campaigns had naturally generated opposition within the common society and police machinery was well aware about this. The protests were peaceful and never went beyond heated arguments. The aim of these protestors was only to register verbal protests.
Still, knowing these facts, the Kolhapur police came under the pressure from the Left and wasted precious time interrogating innocent people who had put forward their protests in a democratic manner. This correspondent learnt that the ABVP had even issued prior notice in writing to the University Authority that its activists would protest against comrade Pansare, if he continues his baseless mis-information campaign about Shivaji. The police arrested ABVP students before verifying facts and is alleged to have done so under pressure from the Leftist. Even though few senior communist party workers and few close Panasare aids said that the ABVP workers were innocent, still leftist elements in media, mainly within electronic media created a virtual pressure on police authority through baseless indiscriminate campaign to arrest ABVP workers and involve people belonging to Hindutva organisations in the investigation list.
This seemed a well thought of strategy to divert and derail the investigation and buy time to save the real culprits. As a result, the local police machinery is still clueless and hesitates to talk openly about the real political angles of the case.
When asked, Additional Superintendent of Police, Kolhapur, Ankit Goyal refused to divulge information about the case to this correspondent, but cleared that he is not under any political pressure from the government side. He said every angle is being probed, but expressed concern about the delay in catching real culprits. He said more the delay; more conspiracy theories will be floated by people and media.
Meanwhile, senior CPI leader comrade Bhalchandra Kango has demanded through a press release that the police investigations should remain with local police station only and ATS, CBI & NIA should not be involved in the investigations at all. It does sound fishy?
Questions that’ll need an answer
It’s time; the communist party too answer some questions-
- Why is time being wasted in interrogating innocent people?
- If the communist party leaders are so sure about the assassins, why don’t they inform the police?
- Why the communist party of India doesn’t want CBI or ATS or NIA to investigate this heinous crime?
- Why no one from the CPI’s high command visited Panasare in hospital? Or attended his funeral?
- Why CPI is putting pressure on police through leftist elements in media and administration not to probe internal party power struggle and the Maoist (naxal) angle to the assassination of Pansare.
Rajesh Prabhu Salgaonkar (The writer is Maharashtra based correspondent)
