By IANS,
Mumbai/New Delhi : The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) will challenge the bail granted to Maharashtra MP Padamsinh Patil in the 2006 double murder of Congress leader Pawan Raje Nimbalkar and his driver Samad Kazi, an official said Wednesday.
“The accused (Patil) is enlarged on bail since September 25 last year. The Additonal Solicitor-General D. Khambatta and the CBI’s Senior Public Prosecutor Ejaz Khan will move the application before the Bombay High Court Monday (June 14),” the official told IANS here this evening.
The development comes in the wake of a notice issued by the Supreme Court Wednesday on a similar plea by the CBI challenging the bail granted to one of the co-conspirators in the double murder, Mohan A. Shukla from Dombivli, a town in Thane.
Besides Patil and Shukla, Satish R. Mandade from Latur is also a conspirator and currently out on bail, the official said.
Patil, elected on a Nationalist Congress Party ticket to the Lok Sabha in May 2009 from Osmanabad, was arrested by the CBI from his Mumbai home June 7, 2009, in connection with the killings near Panvel in Raigad district June 3, 2006.
Patil was granted bail Sep 25, 2009, by a Raigad court after he spent nearly four months in custody.
The CBI has arrested nine people, including Patil, so far in connection with the double murder.
The eight co-conspirators named in the CBI’s 5,000-page charge sheet filed in August 2009 include Patil, Mandade and Shukla – who are the chief conspirators in the murder.
The other accused include Parasmal Tarachand Jain alias Badala, Dinesh R. Tiwari, Kailash Yadav and Gyanendra alias Chhote Pandey, Pintoo Singh and Shashikant Kulkarni.
The CBI said that in 2005, Patil hatched a criminal conspiracy with Mandade and Shukla to kill Nimbalkar who had become a threat to his political career.
Embarrassed by Patil’s arrest in the murder, the NCP suspended him from the party later.