A Pune court on Thursday sent right-wing activist Amol Kale to police custody till September 14 in connection with the murders of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar and Bengaluru journalist Gauri Lankesh.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which secured Kale's custody from the Karnataka Police, produced him before Shivajinagar Court Judicial Magistrate S.M.A. Sayyad who sent him to eight days police custody.
Opposing the CBI's remand plea, Kale lawyer Dharmraj Chandel said even if prima facie evidence is available against his client, it did not warrant custodial interrogation.
He also demanded that Kale should be only questioned about the Dabholkar murder and not about the killing of Communist leader Govind Pansare.
Dabholkar was killed on August 20, 2013 in Pune and Lankesh was killed on September 5, 2017 and police suspect both the murders are connected.
The Karnataka Police SIT had arrested Kale in May as the third suspect in the Gauri Lankesh murder case, besides the earlier arrests of Rajesh Bangera and Amit Digvekar.
In the Dabholkar murder case, there are five accused: Sachin Andure, Sharad Kalaskar and the aforementioned trio (Kale, Bangera and Digvekar).
According to the investigators, Kale allegedly provided firearms and a two-wheeler to Andure and Kalaskar, who killed Dabholkar.
Andure and Kalaskar were nabbed by the Maharashtra ATS last month and their role in the Dabholkar case was revealed during their interrogation.
The investigation into the murder of Gauri Lankesh unravelled when the SIT probing the case made its first arrest, that of KT Naveen Kumar in February this year.
The interrogation of Naveen Kumar led the investigators to the other suspects in the case including Parashuram Waghmare and Amol Kale.
The investigators further uncovered the gang’s connection to an underground pro-Hindutva group and that they conspired to kill several rationalists and progressive thinkers. The SIT officials confirmed that they found in Amol Kale’s diary, a list of 36 names, whom the gang had planned to kill.