Maharashtra’s foremost rationalist, anti-obscurantist crusader and veteran journalist Narendra Dabholkar was shot dead by two gunmen early on Tuesday in Pune. He is survived by wife Shaila, son Hamid and daughter Mukta.
Assassination of the 69-year-old Dabholkar, who was fighting the powerful regressive forces in the state, has shaken the intellectual and the political class.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan has announced a reward of Rs 10 lakh for information on the assassins. The murder sparked off protests and picketing across major towns in the state, with agitators demanding arrest of the killers.
Several political leaders, who had opposed his six-year sustained campaign to get the Maharashtra (Eradication of Black Magic, Evil and Aghori Practices) Bill, 2005, passed, also condemned the murder.
A doctor by training, Dabholkar, the editor of a progressive weekly magazine “Sadhana” and founder of the “Andhashraddha Nirmulan Samiti (anti-superstition movement), was taking a morning stroll near Omkareshwar bridge, when two men on motorcycle shot him four times on the neck and back.
Dabholkar was rushed to Sassoon Hospital, where he was declared dead. The last rites will be performed in his home town Satara.
Later in the day, Pune Police Joint Commissioner (Law and Order) Sanjeev Kumar Singhal briefed the media about the murder. He said while CCTV footage from the Omkareshwar bridge area was being examined, police artists have managed to make sketchs of the two assailants based on description provided by by-standers and passers-by.
According to Singhal, there was no intelligence input or latent threat perceived by Dabholkar himself.
He had recently faced opposition from a certain section of the Warkari sect for his sustained campaign against obscurantist forces in the state.