In October 2009, social activist Satish Shetty had filed a first information report at the Lonavala City police station in Maharashtra against 13 people, including two representatives of the IRB group of companies, for hatching a conspiracy and forging documents to usurp government land. After he exposed the 1,8000-acre land scam Satish began receiving threats. Satish’s brother, Sandeep, subsequently wrote to the police seeking protection his brother and also named some people in his complaint. In January 2010, Satish was brutally murdered on a busy street in Talegaon Dabhade, Pune by some unknown assailants.
Sandeep spoke to The Wire about how IRB was the same company about which Congress leader Digvijay Singh had in 2016 said that it was closely linked to Union Minister Nitin Gadkari, and this was one of the primary reasons why both the Maharashtra police and the Central Bureau of Investigation have tried to scuttle the investigation into his brother’s murder. Instead of arresting those he had named or his brother had exposed, the Maharashtra police first tried to protect the real culprits by arresting people who had nothing to do with the crime, Sandeep said.
He added that Maharashtra government handed the case over to the Central Bureau of Investigation. However, despite admitting that the prima facie motive behind the crime was the complaint by Satish about the land scam, Sandeep said CBI has in these over eight years not arrested a single accused. He claimed that the agency, which has got the matter probed by three different teams till now, has also tried to hamper the pace of investigation due to political pressure and even tried to close the case. But it did not succeed because the Bombay high court was constantly seized of the matter.