Daijiworld News Network - Karkala (GA)

Karkala, Oct 4: All the 10 accused in the Diwakar Shetty murder case have been acquitted by district sessions judge Phanendra Kumar on Tuesday October 3.

As reported earlier in these columns, Diwakar Shetty, a former member of Kukkundoor gram panchayat had been hacked to death by a group of persons near Guru Wines near Nakre on February 23, 2005.  Diwakar was having his dinner along with his friends in Guru Wines when a group led by local Congress leader Gopinath Shetty had attacked him.

Though Diwakar managed to escape from there, he was chased and was finally hacked to death. The then circle inspector Ramchandra Naik had registered case on Gopinath Shetty, Mahesh Karkera, Kabir, Jitendra, Rohit Kumar Adyantaya, Omprakash, Praveen Shetty, Vandan Kumar, Niranjan Shetty, Adarsh Malli and Kitti alian Krishnand.  A chargesheet too was filed agaisnt them.

Though Vandan Kumar was arrested on the same day by the then SI Kiran, the others were arrested later in phases.  However, the prime accused Gopinath Shetty had died of illness later. 

The district sessions judge acquitted the accused owing to lack of witnesses.  The prosecution too failed in establishing the case.