Sarang Akolkar, who is alleged to be among those involved in the murder of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar in 2013, is an engineer who seems to have been driven by his family’s unshakeable belief in the teachings of Jayant Athavale, the spiritual guru of the Sanatan Sanstha cult.
Central Bureau of Investigation officials allege that Akolkar, along with another member of the Sanstha, shot Dabholkar on August 20, 2013, while the anti-superstition crusader was out on a morning walk. The assailants fired three rounds at him from point-blank range and fled on a motorcycle parked nearby. Dabholkar, who received one bullet in his head, died instantly.
This isn't the only case in which Akolkar’s name has figured. He is also thought to have been involved blasts in Goa and Pune.
Early years
Born in 1981, Akolkar grew up in Pune’s Shaniwar Peth locality, which has for generations been the main residential area of the city's Chitpavan Brahmins.
In the first half of the last century, the locality was the epicentre of the corrosive politics of one of its most prominent residents, Hindu Mahasabha leader VD Savarkar. Seventy years later, Shaniwar Peth is the base of other radical Hindutva outfits such as the Abhinav Bharat and the Sanatan Sanstha.
Though the Sanatan Sasntha claims to be devoted to educating "people about the science of spiritualism”, its members have been accused of being involved in terror plots.
Call of the cult
Akolkar’s family were Savarkarites who came under the influence of the Sanatan Sanstha during the late 1990s. By the time Akolkar began to study engineering in his hometown, his mother Kanchan Akolkar and sister Ashwini Kapshikar, along with her husband Omkar Kapshikar, were already active members of the Sanstha.
After graduating as an electronics engineer in 2003 from Bharati Vidyapeeth, Akolkar worked for a while with a private company in Shirwal, a small town in Satara district. But he soon quit and started devoting more time to the Sanstha, which he had already joined as a part-time member. In 2005, he became a sadhak, a full-time member of the Sanstha.
A few years later, Akolkar acted as the Pune district convener of the Sanatan Sanstha’s sister outfit, the Hindu Janjagruti Samiti. In this capacity, he had launched several campaigns against targets that the Sanstha considered to be anti-Hindu. These included a drive in June 2009 against the Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire, which the Sanatan Sanstha claimed showed Hindus in a bad light.
Goa plot
Akolkar first came under the scanner of law-enforcement agencies when his name figured as one of the accused in the Madgaon blast in Goa. Two members of the Sanstha – Malgonda Patil and Yogesh Naik – were killed in October 2009, when an explosive device they were allegedly carrying on a scooter went off prematurely in Madgaon. The men had allegedly planned to disrupt the popular Narkasur event, which is celebrated in Goa on the eve of Diwali. The Sanatan Sanstha had declared this festival, which involves burning an effigy of the demon Narkasur, to be anti-Hindu.
The charge sheet filed by National Investigative Agency in May 2010 listed Akolkar, along with 11 others, as the accused in this case.
Active absconder
Although Sarang has been absconding since the Madgaon blast, his activities have not ceased – he is also thought to have been involved in the blast in the parking lot of Faraskhana police station in Pune on July 10, 2014. Five persons were injured in this explosion, which was caused by an Improvised Explosive Device kept in the storage compartment of a stolen motorcycle.
After Sanstha member, Virendra Tawde, was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation on June 10 in connection with the Dabholkar case, police officials began to scrunitise emails exchanged between him and Akolkar. These messages, claim officials, reveal that the two men were planning to set up a force of 15,000 sainiks who would be tasked with countering “durjans (evil-doers) and anti-Hindus” and establishing a Hindu Rashtra.
The officials said that Sarang considered Tawde to be his mentor and claimed that the duo were contemplating setting up a factory to manufacture guns.