MUMBAI, January 27: Chandrakant D Kamble, Additional Coroner of the Cooper Coroner Court, was removed from his post on January 19 by the state government for ``misconduct'' However, the buzz is that Kamble paid the price for his strong oposition to the Shiv Sena and several strictures passed against state government officials in different cases. Kamble himself told Express Newsline that he was removed only because he belonged to the backward class.Kamble has also alleged that the state government's Home Department which terminated his service has not even followed the bare minimum of procedure. According to Kamble, he received a photocopy of his dismissal order at 11.45 pm on January 19. He was reportedly given neither a detailed statement of the charges leading to his dismissal nor was asked for an explanation. Kamble will now move the Maharashtra Administrative Tribunal against the dismissal order.Kamble was selected through the Maharashtra Public Service Commission examination and joinedservice on June 5, 1996. The government had extended his probation by seven months without giving any reason.Kamble, 43, frequently made news during his tenure in relation to different cases of unnatural deaths those came up for hearing in his court. The panel of jurors in his court ruled that Bollywood actress Divya Bharati's death was a suicide, not murder as was speculated. Kamble also summoned actress Jaya Bachchan in person several times in the suicide case of Kalpana Rangachari, wife of producer-director Bharat Rangachari and manager of Amitabh Bachchan Corporation Limited. Kamble had also pulled up the then zonal Deputy Commissioner of Police, Dr Satyapal Singh, for misbehaviour in the courtroom. He was recently arrested in Pune after his wife complained of physical harassment, but was released on bail.Kamble also invited the ire of the Shiv Sena after he refused to succumb to mounting political pressure in the death of Mahant Puri, a Hindu priest in Bandra west. Shiv Sainiks are allegedlyinvolved in the case, and Kamble had refused to let them off lightly. And in another case, in the death of one Vaishali Pawar, Kamble again refused to blot out the Sena's involvement in Pawar's post-mortem. Subsequqntly, a group of corporators belonging to Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party attacked Kamble and ransacked his chamber. Recently, Kamble allegedly received a letter threatened him of dire consequences if he continued probing into cases involving the Shiv Sena.
