Dabholkar murder: Will Pune's ex-police chief deny using black magic for probe?

Anti-superstition activist and rationalist Narendra Dabholkar was murdered on August 20, 2013. Nearly a year later, forget arresting his murderers, the police don’t even have many trails to follow to continue the investigation. And to add insult to injury for his followers and his family, an Outlook article reported that the Pune Police had resorted to black magic and almost everything Dabholkar had fought against to try trace his killers. Now an article on The Indian Express says that the two people that the Pune police had arrested were released on bail because the police couldn’t prepare a chargesheet on time. Ashish Khetan’s article on The Outlook narrated how former Pune police commissioner Gulabrao Pol had turned to ‘spiritualists’ in order to communicate with Dabholkar’s spirit, who, he claimed, would help tracing his murderer. Khetan reports: “Just two or three months earlier, in September or October, Pol had even set up a ‘crack team’ trained in marshalling the spirits of the dead to invoke Dabholkar’s. Retired assistant commissioner of police Ranjit Pandurang Abhyankar (decorated with the President’s police medal), ex-police constable and now self-styled godman Manish Thakur, along with senior Crime Branch police inspectors and constables formed part of this team. They were given ample police resources, be it vehicles or secret service funds.” [caption id=“attachment_1627873” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Narendra Dabholkar’s body being taken for cremation. AP.[/caption] Khetan describes how apparently Manish Thakur would claim that Dabholkar’s spirit would enter his body, while his own, would take shelter in a jug water. After that, the ‘spirit’ would help police nail the investigation. Pol quit as the police chief of Pune a while back.   IE reports that Pol will hold a press conference soon on the issue. “It is shocking to hear about the alleged use of black magic. It is an irony that police allegedly made such an attempt to crack the murder of Dabholkar who spent his entire life opposing black magic and creating awareness about such practices,” Dabholkar’s son Hamid said in a press conference. Following the revelation, members of anti-superstition organisations in Maharashtra strongly criticised the Pune Police expressing shock at this illogical move. “Dr Dabholkar has fought against irrational and superstitious beliefs and if the then police commissioner Gulabrao Pol himself has come under the spell of irrationality and unscientific temperament, it is really disappointing and I strongly condemn such a kind of thinking and the manner in which investigation has been done,” DNA quotes Shyam Manav, the president of ‘All India Andha-shraddha Nirmulan Samiti as saying.