Ahmedabad, August 18: The Ahmedabad Police’s Crime Branch on Tuesday claimed to have cracked the Amit Jethava murder case with the arrest of a Junagadh police constable, but refused to give a clean chit to BJP MP Dinu Solanki yet.
The Crime Branch said so far investigations show that it was a case of contract killing. They arrested police constable Bahadursinh Vadher, who they said has confessed to giving Rs 11 lakh to two contract killers for Jethava’s murder.
Jethava, an RTI activist, was shot dead on July 20 in Ahmedabad. His parents had alleged the involvement of Solanki in the murder as Jethava had filed several RTI applications, seeking information about the Junagarh MP. They had also alleged that Jethava had talked about the threat posed by Solanki.
A few days later Solanki gave out advertisments in Gujrati newspapers, claiming that he was not involved.
On Tuesday, the Crime Branch said their investigations have found that Vadher (37) ordered the killing to avenge the loss of money he suffered while fighting Jethava’s RTI applications for a 12 hectare mining land he had purchased in Gir.
Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Mohan Jha said, “The investigations so far show involvement of Vadher and his motive to kill Jethava. We cannot comment at this stage whether BJP MP Dinu Solanki is behind this or not. We are not saying we give a clean chit to him, we are investigating the case thoroughly and assure to nab all the accused who conspired in the murder.”
The other two accused wanted in this case are Shailesh Pandya, a sharpshooter from Patan who allegedly shot at Jethava, and Pacham Shiva, a bootlegger.
The Crime Branch have detained two others along with Vadher — Sameer Hajirasool Vora and Sanjay Chauhan.
——Agencies