Dalit triple-murder case: Fadnavis assures speedy probe

He said if the police does not manage to solve the case within a specific period of time, the state govt will have to think of transferring the case to CBI

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis today met the family members of three Dalits who were brutally killed here last month and assured a speedy police probe into the matter.

The Chief Minister's visit comes amid protests by various political parties which condemned the brutal killings of the Dalit family members at Javkheda village in Maharashtra's Ahmednagar district and demanded a CBI probe into it.

"I am constantly monitoring the developments in this case and taking a note of the problems the police personnel are facing while conducting the probe. I have categorically told the police to solve this case as quickly as possible," Fadnavis told reporters here.

"I have been regularly taking briefings from the Director General of Police and the Intelligence department. I have also made my point clear that we cannot give them an indefinite time to conduct the probe. The answers must be revealed in a specific period of time," he said.

If the police does not manage to solve the case within a specific period of time, the state government will have to think of transferring the case to CBI, he said.

Fadnavis, however, did not specify the time-frame he has alloted to the police to solve the triple-murder case.

On October 21 and 22, villagers of Javkheda had retrieved dismembered body parts of a mason, Sanjay Jadhav (42), his wife Jayashree (38) and their teenage son Sunil (19) from a well and strewn all around the land owned by Jadhav.

State Governor C Vidyasagar Rao had recently directed the DGP to appoint a Special Task Force (STF) to probe the killings, after meeting a delegation led by RPI(A) president Ramdas Athawale at the Raj Bhavan in Mumbai.

The incident led to widespread protests in the state and evoked memories of the horrific 2006 Khairlanji massacre, where four members of a Dalit family were brutally murdered in Maharashtra's Bhandara district.