Mumbai: The CBI will challenge the acquittal of former Maharashtra home minister Padamsinh Patil and seven others in the 2006 murder of Congress leader Pawanraje Nimbalkar and his driver, state Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde said on Saturday.
Shinde said that after the verdict, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and he himself discussed the issue with Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
Following their discussion, Shah directed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to challenge the judgment in the higher court, and the central probe agency will act accordingly, Shinde said.
Shah, Fadnavis, and Shinde together attended an event in Kolhapur on Saturday.
A special CBI court in Mumbai on Saturday acquitted Padamsinh Patil and seven others in the Nimbalkar murder case. Special CBI court judge Satyanaryan Navandar said the prosecution failed to prove the chain of conspiracy.
Pawanraje Nimbalkar was the father of dissident Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Omprakash Raje Nimbalkar.
Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Sanjay Raut had earlier claimed that Omprakash was being promised a favourable verdict in his father’s murder case. The verdict in the case was expected on June 16, but the special CBI court in Mumbai on Tuesday deferred the pronouncement to June 20.
On Friday, Omprakash Raje Nimbalkar told PTI that the verdict in the murder case of his father had nothing to do with the “current political situation”.
“Connecting my father’s murder case with the current political situation has no meaning….Had it been so, I would have joined the ruling parties earlier in 2022 seeking a quicker verdict,” Omprakash Raje Nimbalkar told PTI on Friday.
On June 3, 2006, Pawanraje Nimbalkar and his driver, Samad Kazi, were on their way from Mumbai to Osmanabad (now Dharashiv). Two hitmen intercepted their car at Kalamboli in Navi Mumbai and opened fire, killing both on the spot.
The Navi Mumbai police initially probed the case, but the Bombay High Court later transferred it to the CBI.
Patil, a former MP of the undivided Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), was arrested in June 2009, but a court in Alibaug of Raigad district granted him bail in September that year.
