Tai’s brother and Prof Patil were rivals

Even as Pratibha Patil, the UPA-Left candidate for Presidential election, prepares herself to break the jinx, her brother’s name has raged a storm over a two-year-old murder case of the then Jalgaon district Congress President Professor Vishram Patil.
When Prof Patil was hacked to death on September 21, 2005, his widow Rajni Patil, 54, had pointed the needle of suspicion towards Gajendra Narayan Patil, Pratibhatai’s younger brother, and a top Congress leader of Jalgaon city, and former MLA Dr Ulhas Patil. Both had flatly denied the charges then.

But on Friday, Rajni flew in to New Delhi and announced that Pratibhatai had shielded her brother in the murder of her husband.

A senior Congress leader in Jalgaon told DNA on condition of anonymity that there indeed was strong rivalry between Pratibha Patil’s brother and the late Vishram Patil. The latter had pipped the former to become the chief of district unit of the party about a month before his murder, he informed.

In February 2007, while hearing a criminal writ petition filed by Rajni, the Aurangabad bench of Mumbai High Court had ordered that the probe should be handed over to the CBI, given the alleged “involvement of influential political leaders of the region in the conspiracy”. On Thursday, Rajni Patil told DNA that with the CBI probing this case, she was hopeful that the truth would finally come out.

A source in Jalgaon police disclosed that the police too had received complaints against GN Patil suspecting him to be the alleged conspirator of Vishram Patil’s murder.