Plea made to PM to protect under law Savarkar's name from being misused

Armed with a recent Supreme Court order exonerating Vinayak Damodar Savarkar of any role in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, a Mumbai resident has asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to protect his name from being misused or dragged into any further controversy.

In a letter to the Prime Minister, Dr Pankaj Phadnis, a researcher and a trustee of Abhinav Bharat, Mumbai, said since a clean chit has been given by the top court's March 28 judgement, there was a need to include Savarkar's name in the Schedule to Emblems and Names (Prevention of Improper Use) Act 1950 so that there cannot be any insinuation made against him.

So far under the Act, the names of only Mahatma Gandhi, Jawahar Lal Nehru and Chhatrapati Shivaji are included.

Phadnis, who had filed a petition seeking reinvestigation into the assassination of Gandhi, has in his letter quoted the findings of the apex court judgement, which he said exonerated Savarkar from false and motivated allegations of being complicit in the murder.

He said the apex court had gone into details of the false allegations that were hurled at "this great revolutionary for last fifty years."