Pratibha’s latest Family Problem: HC slams CBI over murder probe

“If this is the kind of investigation you have conducted, then we are concerned, indeed we are constrained to say that the country’s premier investigating agency is being corroded,” observed a Division Bench of Justice R M S Khandeparkar and Justice V K Tahilramani directing the CBI’s investigation officer to be in court at the next hearing on July 30.

The court asked Additional Solicitor General B A Desai why there has been no investigation regarding the alleged link between the two killers and the politicians. “What prevented the CBI from investigating that aspect?” the court asked.

Desai argued that the agency had examined 46 witnesses and that the Investigating Officer, who would explain, was in Ahmedabad for his daughter’s wedding.

It was on February 23 this year that the Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court had transferred the case to the CBI saying that given the issues involved and the alleged complicity of influential political leaders, it was a fit case for the agency.

The petitioner alleged that Vishram Patil, who defeated G N Patil in the election for the post of district Congress committee president, had also complained to senior party leaders about the duo allegedly misappropriating funds collected for felicitating Pratibha Patil when she became Governor of Rajasthan.

Appearing for petitioner Rajni Patil, senior counsel Mahesh Jethmalani claimed that he had two CDs which showed the link between the alleged contract killers and G N Patil and former Congress MP Ulhas Patil. It is the petitioner’s case that both were alleged conspirators in the murder of her husband.

The court directed the petitioner to produce the CDs at the next hearing.

According to the petitioner, these CDs contained a video recording of a Congress party meet that purportedly showed links between G N Patil and suspect Ulhaas Patil with the contract killers in custody Raju Mali and Raju Sonawane.

One week after the murder, the Jalgaon police had arrested Mali and Sonawane. However, when the Jalgaon police were on the verge of solving the case, the petitioner alleged, it was transferred to the state CID just nine days after the incident.

In January 2006, while the CID was probing the case, Mali and Sonawane claimed they were made scapegoats and the people behind it were G N Patil and Ulhas. Mali died while in judicial custody on April 7 this year.

The CID concluded that there was no political motive behind the murder and that Vishram Patil was killed because he had allegedly not repaid a loan of Rs 4.5 lakh he had taken from Mali.

Jethmalani asked for scientific tests to be conducted on Sonawane and two others, Liladhar Narkhade and Damodar Lokhande, who allegedly hired the killers but were discharged in the case.

The petitioner claimed that the CDs also show assassin Mali in the company of G N Patil and Lokhande, accused of being an intermediary in the crime, acting as G N Patil’s counting agent in the Congress district committee elections.

Rajni Patil also alleged that Pratibha Patil had influenced the investigation to shield her brother. She has alleged that her husband had complained to the state Congress unit about alleged misappropriation of funds collected for tsunami relief by G N Patil and Ulhaas Patil.