Mumbai: A Mumbai sessions court on Wednesday rejected an application by Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in which the agency had sought custody of accused Sharad Kalaskar in Narendra Dabholkar murder case.
The application was rejected by the court on the ground that the CBI has applied for remand after the accused was already remanded to Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) custody till September 3.
The CBI wanted to confront Kalaskar with another accused of Dabholkar murder case, Sachin Andure, who was arrested from Aurangabad after a tipoff by ATS. Andure has already been sent in the CBI’s custody till August 30 by the Pune CBI court.
Rejecting the CBI’s plea, the court said that the same accused was sent to ATS custody in a terror conspiracy case on Tuesday and the court cannot remand this accused from ATS to CBI according to CrPC 367.
According to the CBI application, the investigating agency had sought Kalaskar’s custody after obtaining a production warrant from Pune court on August 23. However, on Wednesday, the court slammed the CBI for not approaching the court before Tuesday, when it gave custody of the said accused to ATS, when the CBI had the production warrant with them since August 23.
The court also slammed ATS for its approach in giving its no objection to the CBI application seeking remand. Question was raised by Kalaskar’s lawyer on ATS approach in giving NOC to the CBI custody of the accused. Defence lawyer Sanjiv Punalekar told the court that according to its own claim, ATS is investigating a terror conspiracy case and it was astonishing that it is ready to hand over its terror accused to the CBI in a murder case of just one person.
[source_without_link]ANI[/source_without_link]