Two days on, no headway in RTI activist's death in Nanded

Two days after the suspected murder of Right to Information (RTI) activist Ramdas Patil Gadegaonkar, the Nanded police are still clueless about the killers. The body of Gadegaonkar, who took on the sand mafia and made them pay a huge penalty, was found under the Hingoli bridge here on Friday night.

The Shivajinagar police said they had registered a case but were yet to ascertain whether it was a case accidental death or one of murder. The post-mortem report has not brought out anything conclusive.

Meanwhile, a delegation of Shiv Sena workers — Gadegaonkar was Shiv Sena worker for a long time — led by the party’s district president Hemant Patil met the superintendent of police, Nanded, Sandeep Karnik on
Sunday and submitted a memorandum demanding immediate arrest of those responsible for the death of the activist.

Gadegaonkar had recently started a massive movement against the sand mafia in Nanded. The district authorities had recently recovered a penalty of nearly Rs7 lakh from illegal operators in sand after being alerted by him.

Vijay Kumbhar, a Pune-based RTI activist, said, “Ramdas Gadegaonkar was not an RTI activist per se. He was a Shiv Sena member fighting on the issue of the sons of the soil. An old crusader, his fight centred around illegal encroachments, land acquisition and the activities of the sand mafia. He also took up corruption issues consistently.”

Shiv Sena district chief Hemant Patil on Sunday demanded that the case be handed over to CID. He said the Nanded police still was clueless as to who committed the murder.