By TwoCircles.Net Staff reporter,
Mumbai: Several social, democratic and progressive groups along with artists and prominent personalities from across the state strongly protested against the government’s failure to track the killers of rationalists Govind Pansare and Narendra Dabholkar.
Pansare was shot at on February 16, 2015 in Kolhapur while on his morning walk, accompanied by his wife. He passed away five days later in hospital. Dabholkar too was gunned down on August 20, 2013 by two youth on a motorcycle on the Omkareshwar Bridge near Pune’s Shanivar Peth area while he was on a morning walk. Offenders in both the cases have not been arrested by state police up till now.
Mass Rally organized in Mumbai on March 11, 2015 against the killing of rationalist leaders Dabholkar and Pansare
A mass rally was organized here on Wednesday from Byculla to Azad Maidan in solidarity with the deceased leaders and to demonstrate anger against state police failure to capture the criminals. The rally was attended by thousands of people.
It was after a long time that the city witnessed red flags all over during the march. It was reported that the crowd was huge as much that when the march reached Azad Maidain the people in the rally were at the Byculla.
The rally was organized by Maharashtra Democratic Ambedkar Commission and was headed by Satya Shodha Communist Group. There were red flags all over and the crowd was chanting secular and anti-sanatan slogans.
The rally turned into a mass gathering in Azad Maidan where many prominent personalities addressed the people.
Advocate Prakash Ambedkar, national leader of Bharipa Bahujan Mahasangh said, “People with communal mindset have entered police machinery due to which communal incidences have increased in the state.”
Taking on RSS, he alleged that organizations – ‘Abhinav Bharat’ and ‘Sanatan Sanstha’ – whose members are accused in bomb blast cases, ‘had affiliation with it and those organizations have been found to have involvement in terror activities.’
He urged the gathering to stick to secular ideology and to unite against such communal organizations that are working to divide the society.
Firoz Mithibolwala, President of Bharat Bachao Andolan, said,” The ideology which is behind the killing of these rationalists (Dabholkar and Pansare) is the same which is responsible for killing of Advocate Shahid Azmi. It is high time for Muslims to come forward and become part of such movements and join hands with secular organizations”.
Bhalchandra Kango, secretary of state unit of CPI, said, “We condemn the apathetic attitude of the state government towards the killing of both these leaders. Dabholkar was killed about 18 months back while Pansare was shot dead last month, but the police have failed to track the culprits in both the cases.”
He also said that Maratha warrior Shivaji was not anti-Muslims nor did he ever oppress any community. He said Pansare was creating awareness amongst the people regarding the actual ideology of Shivaji, ‘his work in this regard was not acceptable to one section of the society who were portraying warrior Shivaji to be hardliner and against other communities’.
This was the reason that he was gunned down, Kango alleged. He said the morning walks that were launched to register protest against the killings would continue to be held on the 20th day of every month.
[with inputs from Urdutimes]