The Bombay High Court on Wednesday granted bail to Sharad Kalaskar, one of the convicts in the murder of anti-superstition activist Narendra Dabholkar, Live Law reported.

A bench of Justices Ajay Gadkari and Ranjitsinha Bhonsale also expressed doubts about the manner in which the Central Bureau of Investigation secured his identification by witnesses, the Hindustan Times reported.

Dabholkar, who was the founder of the Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti, was shot dead in Pune in August 2013. In May 2024, a special court in Pune convicted Kalaskar, along with another man Sachin Andure, for the murder and sentenced them to life imprisonment.

Two others – Virendrasingh Tawade, Vikram Bhave and Sanjeev Punalekar – were acquitted.

The judgement was pronounced after a trial that lasted almost three years.

Subsequently, Dabholkar’s daughter filed an appeal in the High Court against the acquittal of Tawade, Bhave and Punalekar, The Hindu reported. Additionally, Kalaskar moved the High Court against his conviction and also sought bail till the appeal is disposed of.

On Wednesday, a division bench of Justices AS Gadkari and RR Bhosale suspended the life sentence imposed on Kalaskar by a Pune sessions court and granted him bail, observing that the prosecution’s case relied heavily on unreliable witnesses. The court also took into account Kalaskar’s long incarceration of more than eight years.

The High Court also directed him to furnish a bail bond of Rs 50,000. The judges also declined to allow a petition filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation, which is investigating the case, to stay the bail order for four weeks.

“Since we have already raised doubts over the identity of the applicant Kalaskar as the assailant, there is no question of staying this order,” Live Law quoted the bench as saying.

The case

The Pune Police was initially investigating Dabholkar’s murder in 2013. However, the CBI took over the inquiry in 2014 following an order from the High Court.

The CBI had subsequently arrested Tawade, a doctor linked to Hindutva group Sanatan Sanstha, in 2016. It had alleged that Tawade was the mastermind of the conspiracy to murder Dabholkar.

According to the central agency, the Sanatan Sanstha was opposed to the work carried out by the Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti, an organisation working to fight superstition.

In 2018, Kalaskar and Andure, also linked to the Sanatan Sanstha, were arrested. The next year, the CBI arrested Punalekar and Bhave, who were also linked to the group.

Tawade, Kalaskar, Andure and Bhave were charged under sections of the Indian Penal Code pertaining to murder and criminal conspiracy as well as sections of the Arms Act and the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act. Punalekar was charged for destroying evidence in the case.

Dabholkar’s murder in 2013 had been followed by the murders of rationalist and Communist Party of India leader Govind Pansare in Maharashtra’s Kolhapur and MM Kalburgi, a Kendriya Sahitya Akademi awardee and anti-superstition activist, in Karnataka’s Dharwad district in 2015.

Investigating agencies have said the three cases and the killing of journalist Gauri Lankesh in 2017 were linked and Hindutva groups were behind them.

In a separate development, Kalaskar, along with Tawade and another person identified as Amol Kale, were granted bail by the Kolhapur bench of the High Court in October 2025 in the murder of Pansare.