ON September 16, 2015, seven months after the dastardly murder of senior CPI leader Govind Pansare in February, and just a fortnight after the similar murder of prominent intellectual Prof M M Kalburgi, the Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) of Maharashtra arrested three ‘Hindutva’-minded fanatics of a thoroughly communal organisation called ‘Sanatan Sanstha’, while a fourth one called Rudra Patil is absconding.

Actually, the Sanatan Sanstha was very much on the radar of the police investigation immediately after the murder of Pansare. But after the above arrests were made, a leading Marathi daily quoted an unnamed high official in the state home ministry as saying that political pressure from the top was exerted on the police to investigate all other possible angles in Pansare’s murder, thus letting the Sanatan Sanstha off the hook. It is widely believed that it was only after Kalburgi’s similar murder, when the BJP-led Maharashtra state government realised that the investigations of the Karnataka police might lead to the Sanatan Sanstha and expose its own role, that the arrests were finally made.

While there is nothing to be surprised about the BJP-led central and state governments’ inaction in the case of Pansare’s murder, the similar inaction of the Congress-NCP central and state governments in the case of Dabholkar’s murder over two years ago in August 2013 has always been a source of worry.          

On September 18, the Sanatan Sanstha held a press conference in Mumbai in which, while it accepted that the arrested fanatics were its ‘activists’, it denied that it or they had any role in Pansare’s murder. Its spokesmen then charged in the press conference that they were being unfairly targeted by the police under the pressure of ‘progressive forces’. The BJP and Shiv Sena, as was only to be expected, generally supported the contentions of the Sanatan Sanstha.

The CPI(M) immediately took the initiative, brought all nine Left and secular parties in the Left Democratic Front and the Maharashtra Democratic Front together, and organised a press conference in Mumbai on September 19, exposing the role of the Sanatan Sanstha and making three major demands. 

The press statement released by the CPI(M), CPI, PWP, BRP-BM (Prakash Ambedkar), Lal Nishan Party, Lal Nishan Party (Leninist), Janata Dal (Secular), CPI(ML)-Liberation and SUCI-C, is given below.

On the same day, all the above political parties jointly denounced the notoriously authoritarian ‘Sedition Circular’ of the BJP-led Maharashtra state government (see the earlier report on the same in these columns), and decided to make public bonfires of that circular in statewide joint protest actions on October 7. There were heated denunciations of this circular from many other quarters also. As a result, the state government was finally forced to withdraw it last week.

JOINT PRESS RELEASE

OF SEPTEMBER 19

“Seven months after the assassination of veteran Communist leader and author of the famous book ‘Who Was Shivaji?’, three fanatics of the Sanatan Sanstha – Sameer Gaikwad, Shriram Jadhav and Sushil Jadhav – have been arrested in that connection during the last three days. Actually, these arrests should have been made much earlier. But there are clear indications that this unforgivable delay is the result of political pressure from the top on the police and investigating agencies.

“It is now clear that the modus operandi of the assassinations of three eminent secular and rationalist individuals Dr Narendra Dabholkar, Comrade Govind Pansare and Prof M M Kalburgi during the last two years, was chillingly similar. That is why the needle of suspicion for all these three killings points to the Sanatan Sanstha and related ‘Hindutva’ communal organisations.

“For the bomb blasts that took place in Thane and Vashi cities in 2008, the Court had convicted Ramesh Gadkari and Vikram Bhave of the Sanatan Sanstha and had handed down a sentence of ten years imprisonment to them. In Goa, Sanatan Sanstha men Malgonda Patil and Yogesh Naik were killed when some bombs that they were carrying on a motor cycle accidentally exploded.

“With this background, the then ATS chief Hemant Karkare, who was martyred at the time of the Pakistani terrorist strike on Mumbai on November 26, 2008, was the first to send a recommendation to the state government that a ban be brought on the Sanatan Sanstha. In 2011, when Rakesh Maria was the ATS chief, he submitted further evidence of the terrorist activities of the Sanatan Sanstha and sent yet another recommendation to the state government to ban this outfit.

“The Congress-led state government at the time sent proposals to ban the Sanatan Sanstha to the Congress-led central government, but the centre refused to act. If only immediate action had been taken then to ban these outfits and to flush out and destroy their terrorist networks, the lives of Dabholkar, Pansare and Kalburgi might have been saved.

“The Left Democratic Front (LDF) and the Maharashtra Democratic Front (MDF) have always strongly opposed all kinds of terrorism and will continue to do so – whether it is of the Islamic-based terrorist organisations or of Hindutva-based terrorist organisations.

“The LDF and the MDF strongly denounce the moves of the Sanatan Sanstha to hold press conferences aimed to whitewash its real nature and, on the contrary, lead vitriolic attacks against progressive forces and individuals. We hereby make the following demands of the central and state government:

1.    Speedy and in-depth investigations of the murders of Dabholkar, Pansare and Kalburgi must be completed, and their assassins and the diabolical forces behind them must be exposed and made to face stringent punishment. All political interference in this must be stopped forthwith.

2.    Considering the proven terrorist history of the Sanatan Sanstha, an immediate ban must be imposed upon it and its poisonous communal publications like the daily ‘Sanatan Prabhat’.

3.    The proposals that have been sent earlier by the state government to the central government asking for a ban on the Sanatan Sanstha must be made public, so that the real nature of this organisation will be exposed before the people.

“The LDF and the MDF have decided to launch a concerted statewide campaign around the above three demands, in order to increase the political consciousness among the people of Maharashtra.