Apex court keeps plea to re-investigate Mahatma Gandhi murder pending

The Supreme Court on Friday asked some searching questions on a plea seeking the reopening of the probe into Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination and appointed senior advocate Amrender Sharan as amicus curiae to assist it in the matter. A Bench comprising Justices S A Bobde and L Nageswara Rao was initially of the view that “nothing can be done in law” in the case which was decided long ago, but later told Sharan, a former additional solicitor general, that its observation was not binding on him to make an assessment of the matter. The Bench, which posted the matter for further hearing on October 30, raised a volley of questions, including how evidence could be collected now to order further investigation into the case which had led to the conviction and execution of Nathuram Vinayak Godse and Narayan Apte on November 15, 1949. Gandhi was shot dead at point blank range in New Delhi on January 30, 1948 by Godse, a right-wing advocate of Hindu nationalism. The Bench, which during the hearing observed that “we are not inclined to go into it”, later changed its mind after the petitioner said he should be given a time as his appeal before the National Archives and Research Administration, Maryland in the United States, was yet to be decided for declassifying of certain sensitive documents connected with the assassination. The petition filed by Mumbai-based Pankaj Phadnis , a researcher and a trustee of Abhinav Bharat, has sought reopening of the probe on several grounds, claiming it was one of the biggest cover-ups in the history.