SC to consider PIL for Bapu killing re-probe

New Delhi, October 6

Almost seven decades after Nathuram Godse killed Mahatma Gandhi in the national capital on January 30, 1948, the Supreme Court today decided to consider a PIL seeking to reopen the probe into the assassination.

Acting on a petition by a Mumbai researcher, a Bench headed by Justice SA Bobde appointed senior advocate Amrender Sharan as amicus curiae to assist it in the matter even as it wondered if any evidence would be there after such a long time. 

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Dr Pankaj Phadnis, a trustee of Abhinav Bharat, has demanded reopening of the investigation, calling it one of the biggest cover-ups in Indian history. He has challenged a Bombay High Court decision dated June 6, 2016, dismissing his PIL on the ground that it had been filed 46 years after the submission of the Kapur Commission report.

Before posting the matter for October 30, the Bench, also comprising Justice L Nageswara Rao, raised several questions. It wondered how evidence could be collected after such a long gap for further probe into the assassination for which Godse and Narayan Apte were hanged in 1949. Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was given the benefit of doubt for lack of evidence.

“We are not inclined to go into it,” the Bench said, only to change its mind after Phadnis said he should be given time as his appeal before the National Archives and Research Administration, US, for de-classifying documents connected with the assassination was yet to be decided. 

He questioned the ‘three-bullet theory’ relied upon by courts to convict Godse and Apte and claimed that there could be a third assassin.

“We want to go by the law and not by passion... You say that there was someone else, a third person who killed him (Gandhi). Is that person alive today to face the trial?” the Bench asked. The assassination could have been carried out by an organised body, named ‘Force 136’ (a British special intelligence unit), Phadnis responded.  He said there was a need to investigate if OSS, an agency of the US during World War II, had tried to protect Gandhi. — TNS