Politics among reasons why justice eluded Malegaon and 7/11 victims, Dabholkar: Borwankar

Pune, Aug 22 (PTI) Former IPS officer Meeran Borwankar has said that political interference was one of the reasons why Malegaon and 7/11 blasts victims and the kin of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar could not get full justice.

Speaking at the 12th death anniversary event of Dr Dabholkar in the city on Wednesday, the former Indian Police Service (IPS) officer claimed that she had received a threatening email questioning her participation in the programme.

“I decided to speak on the same subject I had recently written about in an article in a Marathi daily about political interference in policing,” she said.

Borwankar said ex-Mumbai police commissioner Julio Ribeiro wrote an article in an English daily in Punjab that former Mumbai ATS chief Hemant Karkare had confided in him about facing “political pressure” from a Delhi-based leader in the Malegaon blasts case.

Ribeiro wrote in the article that his conversation with Karkare had happened a day or two before the death of the Mumbai ATS (anti-terrorism squad) chief in the 26/11 attacks in 2008, said Borwankar.

“Similarly, Rohini Salian, with whom I worked closely and who was a sincere, committed and knowledgeable prosecutor, was set aside in the Malegaon blasts case after the NIA took over. She had gone on record to say that there was pressure on her to go soft. After the Malegaon blasts verdict came, she sought to know where the evidence had gone,” Borwankar said.

The former IPS officer also cited a Pune court’s observations in the Dabholkar murder case.

“Sentencing two accused to life imprisonment and acquitting three others, the judge observed that if three accused were acquitted, who was the main conspirator and who hatched the plot to kill Dr Dabholkar. Neither the CBI nor the police could reach the mastermind. Was it failure, or deliberate, or was there any influence by a powerful person,” she asked.

She said that if politicians interfere in cases like Dabholkar murder and Malegaon blasts, and victims do not get justice, then what could be worse than that? “It is true that we could not give justice to the 190 victims of the 7/11 train bombings, the Malegaon victims, or trace the real perpetrators in the Dabholkar murder. Along with various other factors, political interference is one of the key reasons,” she said.

She claimed, “... while working in the police department in different roles, how pressure affects the police’s efficiency and how, instead of reaching the truth, we lose our path.” Dabholkar was shot dead by two assailants when he was on his morning walk on a bridge near Omkareshwar temple in Pune on August 20, 2013.

Nearly 17 years after the Malegaon blast claimed six lives, a special court in Mumbai on July 31 acquitted all seven accused, including former BJP MP Pragya Singh Thakur and Lt Col Prasad Purohit, noting there was “no reliable and cogent evidence” against them.

The Bombay High Court on July 21 acquitted all 12 accused in the 7/11 Mumbai train blasts case of 2006, which left more than 180 dead, saying the prosecution had “utterly failed” to prove the charges and it was “hard to believe the accused committed the crime”. PTI SPK NR