By IANS,
Mumbai : The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Thursday completed the probe into a double murder case involving parliamentarian Padamsinh B. Patil, who has since been expelled from the Natioalist Congress Party (NCP), and eight other accused, and filed a charge sheet before a Maharashtra court.
The charge sheet was filed before Panvel Magistrate Mangala A.M., CBI’s senior public prosecutor Ejaz Khan told IANS.
The significant development into the high-profile case took place nearly 10 weeks after Patil was nabbed from Mumbai June 7 for the killing of Congress leader Pawanraje Nimbalkar and his driver Samad Abdul Wahid Kazi Feb 03, 2006, at Kalamboli near Panvel.
The investigations into the case – directed by CBI Joint Director (Western Region) Rishi Raj Singh – have come up with several startling revelations.
According to the charge sheet, in 2005 Patil and co-accused Satish R. Mandade and Mohan Shukla entered into a criminal conspiracy to eliminate Pawanrage alias Bhupalsingh Santajiraje Nimbalkar since he posed a threat to the Patil’s political career and survival.
Shukla arranged to give a contract of Rs.3 million on behalf of Patil to Parasmal Tarachand Jain for killing Nimbalkar, the charge sheet says.
Co-accused Jain, through his acquaintance Kailash Yadav, arranged for three shooters – Dinesh Tiwari, Chhote Pandey and Pintoo Singh. They procured arms, ammunition and a vehicle to execute the contract killing, according to the charge sheet.
For this, they were paid the contract money in instalments of Rs.100,000, Rs.150,000 and Rs.250,000 from Mandade and his brother-in-law Shashikant Kulkarni, which was utilised for procuring the arms and a vehicle, according to the CBI.
In May 2006, Tiwari, Pandey and Pintoo reached Mumbai by train from Varanasi and left for Latur by the vehicle procured earlier, but failed to locate Nimbalkar there, or in Osmanabad or Pune.
In Latur, Mandade suggested to Jain that he should call up Nimbalkar under an assumed name and lure him for a land deal.
Jain, posing as ‘Mahendra Jain’, called Nimbalkar and succeeded in fixing up a meeting at Shilphata. He also learnt that from there, Nimbalkar would go to Pune. The would-be killers then planned out a suitable spot near Kalamboli where they could ambush and kill Nimbalkar.
After successfully gunning down Nimbalkar and his driver, the killers left the place in their Tata Indica car, dumped the arms and ammunition nearby and abandoned the vehicle in Belavali village before returning to Mumbai.
Thereafter, Mandade and Shukla collected the contract killing money from Patil and handed it over to Jain, the charge sheet says.
In turn, Jain traveled to Bashkari, Uttar Pradesh, and handed over the amount to the killer trio, the charge sheet said.
Investigations were initiated in the case by the Kalamboli Police Station and later, as per a Bombay High Court order of Oct 23, 2008, handed the case over to the CBI.
The CBI conducted investigations into the case and finally nabbed Patil and the others involved in the double murder case.
They are: Patil, 69, of Osmanabad district from where he was elected to the Lok Sabha in May 2009; Mandade, 55, of Latur district; Shukla, 59, and Jain, 47, both of Dombivli in Thane district; Tiwari, 39, of Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh; Singh, 31, of Siwan, Bihar; Pandey and Yadav, 46, both of Ambedkar Nagar, Uttar Pradesh; and Kulkarni, 53, of Mumbai.