Four months after the gruesome triple murder of a Dalit family, the Maharashtra police have filed a charge sheet against three persons in a local court in Ahmednagar district.
Police sources said investigating authorities filed a 1,769-page charge sheet against the prime accused Prashant Jadhav, his brother Ashok and his father, Dilip Jadhav in connection with the murder of his uncle, Sanjay Jadhav (42), his aunt Jayashree (38) and his cousin, the teenaged Sunil (19) on the intervening night of October 20-21 last year. Dilip Jadhav is the deceased Sanjay’s older brother.
The charge-sheet was filed in Pathardi Taluk where the incident took place.
In December last year, the State police arrested Prashant Jadhav, who had filed the FIR about the murders on October 22.
The police dismissed suggestions that the crime was caste-motivated and claimed that the murders were the fallout of a family dispute.
‘Caste-angle not probed’The police’s claim to have solved the mysterious and gory murders was challenged by the deceased Sunil Jadhav’s parents as well as several activists who claimed that the police had not conducted an impartial probe and blamed agencies for not thoroughly investigating the caste angle.
According to them, the police have allegedly fabricated the sequence of events to deflect attention from the crime being a caste-atrocity.
Their son, Dilip and their grandchildren, Ashok and Prashant, have been falsely taken into custody, they allege.