Anti-bill forces responsible for Dabholkar's killing: Chavan

Blaming opponents of the anti-superstition bill for the killing of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar, Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan has said organisations behind such acts should be be isolated and their activities stopped.

Amid spontaneous public outrage and grief over 69-year-old Dabholkar's killing in Pune on Tuesday, the state government yesterday had cleared a proposal to promulgate an ordinance to check black magic and inhuman religious rituals.

"The forces which did not want this Bill to be presented and passed into a law were the people responsible for silencing his voice," Chavan said.

"Those who targeted Dabholkar were not political organisations. This is ideological rift. People who carried out such assassinations, they are not political parties," he said.

"This organisation had earlier indulged in bomb making and terrorist activities," he said but added, "I am not saying specifically because I have no information as to who killed him."

"What I am trying to say is the organisation, similar organisations indulged in terrorism. Such organisations have to be identified, isolated and their activities have to be stopped," the chief minister said.

"It was a well planned and premeditated murder is what I am saying," he said.

"What has happened is most reprehensible. It brings a black name to the fair name of Maharashtra. The only thing we can do is to catch the culprits and the conspirators. The ideology which created such hatred...That they have silenced the voice," he said.

"What we are seeing is a fractured polity and special interest groups making unreasonable demands just to become popular, so that they play for the vote bank politics to expand their political space," he said.