Eleven years after Narendra Dabholkar, an anti-superstition crusader and the founder of Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti (MANIS), was killed in broad daylight in Pune, key conspirators from Sanatan Sanstha, a radical extremist Hindutva organisation, and its allied outfits received a clean chit.

Virendrasinh Tawade, an ENT surgeon and the chief of the western region of the Hindu Janjagran Samiti, advocate Sanjeev Punalekar and Vikram Bhave of the Hindu Vidhidnya Parishad (HVP), who were accused by the Central Bureau of Investigation as the main suspects, were acquitted by the UAPA court in Pune. Sachin Andure and Sharad Kalaskar, the alleged shooters, have been sentenced to life imprisonment.

Dabholkar’s murder on August 20, 2013, by two men on a motorcycle, while he was out on a morning walk, sent shockwaves across Maharashtra. Terming the verdict as partially satisfying, Dabholkar's son and noted activist Hamid said he would appeal in the High Court against the acquittal of the three conspirators. “It is an important verdict. Two shooters have been convicted. But justice has not been delivered against the mastermind yet,” he said.

Kalaskar is also accused of being involved in the murder of Kannada journalist Gauri Lankesh. Tawade was alleged to have recruited men for the murders of Govind Pansare, M M Kalburgi and Lankesh.

Hamid said he was hopeful that the judgement in the case of the other three murders would disclose the real mastermind. “Dabholkar’s murder was an attack on democracy and free thinking and an attempt to warn, that we will eradicate the thought by killing a man,” the family said in a statement.

The Goa-based Sanatan Sanstha, which champions the cause of establishing a Hindu Rashtra, and is an umbrella organisation of around 30 different Hindu right-wing outfits, claimed on X, that it was made a scapegoat in Dabholkar’s murder. After years of defamation, threats of ban, and an international conspiracy to malign its name, the acquittal of its members exposed the myth of Hindu terror, it said.

Members of Sanatan Sanstha were alleged to have masterminded ‘saffron terror’ (a popular term that emerged as an antithesis of Islamist terror) and linked to the 2008 Malegaon blast that killed six people and the 2009 Margao blast in Goa in which two members of the outfit were killed.

Following Dabholkar’s assassination, veteran communist leader Govind Pansare and MM Kalburgi were shot dead in Kolhapur and Karnataka in 2015 and Kanada journalist Gauri Lankesh in 2017. The involvement of Sanatan Sanstha and the HJS emerged as a common thread in the murders of the four rationalist thinkers, who routinely spoke out against Hindu extremist practices.

Dabholkar’s murder came just days after the state government agreed to table the Anti-Superstition Bill that would criminalise black magic, charms and superstition rituals. A leading progressive thinker and crusader against fraudulent and exploitative practices in the guise of religion, Dabholkar tirelessly worked in Maharashtra’s hinterland to educate people about scientific temper and rationalism. He was also a key activist in the anti-caste movement and fought for the equality of Dalit communities.

Narendra Nayak, the founder of the Dakshina Kannada Rationalist Association, remembered his close associate Dabholkar for making several amendments and drafts to the bill and convincing the government to pass the Act. However, many right-wing and Hindu nationalist organisations labelled Dabholkar’s work and the bill as anti-Hindu.

Shortly, after his murder, the state government passed the Maharashtra Prevention and Eradication of Human Sacrifice, other Inhuman and Aghori Practices and Black Magic Act, 2013.

Nayak, who was also one of the six targets on the hit list of Sanatan Sanstha, bemoaned the clean chit to the extremist organisation as an “expected verdict” under the BJP government.

“The Hindu right wing was emboldened after Dabholkar’s assassination and the BJP government coming to power. There were several threats and intimidation against people like me who worked to eradicate superstition practices. But, we never stopped our activities. Superstition cannot be countered otherwise accept education,” he said.

Nayak recalled Lankesh warning him to be careful, nearly six months before she was shot dead. Like her, Dabholkar was also fearless and refused police protection. “He told me, ‘if I take the police along with me, they will come after someone else, it is better they come after me.’ That was his attitude,” says Nayak.