Pune: A sessions court in the city has acquitted three accused in the Dec 3, 2007, dacoity-cum-murder of Anil Dhole, a close aide of Kalyani Deshpande, who ran a prostitution racket in her ‘White House’ bungalow on Sus Road.The court found multiple gaps in the prosecution’s case, like key and material witnesses not being examined and the failure to establish a complete chain of circumstances that is essential to establish the guilt in a case based on circumstantial evidence.The mastermind of the crime, identified by the police as Babu Parmar, remains absconding 18 years after the crime. The court had separated the trial against him as and when he would be arrested. Additional sessions judge SR Agrawal directed the Chatushrungi police on April 27 this year to file a separate chargesheet against Parmar.The three accused tried for the offences of dacoity and murder, among others, were granted bail within a year of the crime.. However, one of them remains in jail for another crime. It took 12 years for the court to frame charges in 2020 after the police had filed a chargesheet in 2008, and another two years before the trial against the three accused commenced in 2022.Additional public prosecutor Namdeo Taralgatti told TOI, “The delay was mainly on account of the main accused remaining absconding all these years and the three co-accused being granted bail. We revived the case and examined one of the witnesses, Kalyani, who was lodged in jail. The other witnesses, including the women confined by the accused and the driver of Kalyani, couldn’t be examined as they couldn’t be traced. The case against a juvenile offender in the crime was tried by a juvenile court.”Judge Agrawal noted that no direct eyewitness was examined and that key witnesses, including the injured and other survivors of the incident, were not brought before the court. “Their non-examination creates a serious doubt regarding the veracity of the prosecution case,” the judge said.The court noted that the case rested entirely on circumstantial evidence and alleged recoveries, in the absence of any direct eyewitness account. It reiterated that in such cases, the prosecution is required to establish a complete and unbroken chain of circumstances pointing only towards the guilt of the accused.
