Twenty years after Congress leader Pawanraje alias Bhupalsingh Santajiraje Nimbalkar and his driver Samad Abdul Wahid Kazi were shot dead in Navi Mumbai, a special CBI court on Saturday acquitted all nine accused in the case, including former Maharashtra home minister Padamsinh Patil.A special CBI court on Saturday acquitted all nine accused in the case, including former Maharashtra home minister Padamsinh Patil.Special judge Satyanarayan Navandar also acquitted Latur-based businessman Satish Mandade, former Kalyan-Dombivli Municipal Corporation councillor Mohan Shukla, Parasmal Badala (Jain), alleged shooters Dinesh Tiwari and Pintusingh Chaudhary, BSP worker Kailash Yadav from Baskhari in Uttar Pradesh’s Ambedkar Nagar district, his close aide Gyanendra Pande, and former State Excise officer Shashikant Kulkarni.The prosecution had alleged that Patil (86) and the other accused were part of a conspiracy to eliminate Nimbalkar over a political rivalry, and that two of the accused carried out the killings. However, the court found the evidence insufficient to convict them.According to the prosecution, Nimbalkar was travelling from Mumbai to Pune in his Skoda car on June 3, 2006, when a Tata Indica car overtook and blocked his vehicle in the steel market in Kalamboli, following which Badala, who later became an approver, got out of the Indica car and inquired about his employer from Kazi.The prosecution alleged that as Kazi informed Badala that the person sitting in the rear passenger seat was Nimbalkar, Dinesh Tiwari and Pintusingh Chaudhary, who were accompanying him, shot and killed the Congress leader and Kazi. Badala and the alleged shooters then fled the spot, later abandoned the Indica car, and parted ways.Kalamboli police in Navi Mumbai registered an FIR, and the Navi Mumbai police crime branch investigated the case but failed to achieve a breakthrough, prompting Nimbalkar’s widow, Anandibai, to approach the Bombay High Court.In her petition for a CBI probe into the double murder case, Anandibai named NCP leader Padmasingh Patil as the prime suspect. She said Patil and Nimbalkar worked together until disputes arose between them around 2002, after which Nimbalkar lodged several complaints against Patil with various authorities.According to her, in 2004, Nimbalkar contested the legislative assembly election against Patil, who won by a narrow margin of 484 votes, and the NCP leader therefore viewed Nimbalkar as a threat to his political career and, with the help of his close aides, had her husband killed before the elections for the Terna sugar factory, held in June 2006.Acting on Anandibai’s petition, the high court transferred the case to the CBI, observing that the probe conducted by the Navi Mumbai police had reached a dead end. Later, the Supreme Court transferred the trial from the Raigad sessions court in Alibag to the Mumbai sessions court.The CBI said to have cracked the case after Parasmal Badala, who was already in its custody in another case, allegedly revealed the entire plot. He purportedly told investigators that he was suffering from a venereal disease and urgently needed money for treatment; therefore, he went to his friend Mohan Shukla for financial assistance.Shukla, according to the CBI, entrusted the job of eliminating Nimbalkar to Badala and asked him to meet Mandade in Latur, where the businessman offered to pay him ₹12 lakh to get the job done. Mandade also showed him Nimbalkar’s residence at Govardhanwadi in Latur district, his tractor showroom in Dharashiv, and his second house in Pune. However, Badala could not execute the plan alone and eventually expressed his inability to Mandade.The businessman then advised him to involve other people and revised the offer to ₹30 lakh. Accordingly, Badala went to Uttar Pradesh and met Kailash Yadav, who, in turn, entrusted the work to Gyanendra Pande. Badala paid ₹1.50 lakh to Yadav and returned to his residence in Dombivli.In the second week of May 2006, Badala received Pande, Dinesh Tiwari, and Pintusingh Chaudhary at Kalyan station. They travelled to Latur in a second-hand Indica car purchased by Badala using money paid by Mandade. They visited the places frequented by Nimbalkar, but they did not find the Congress leader.On the fateful day, June 3, 2006, to find Nimbalkar’s location, Badala called him pretending to be one Mahendra Jain, claiming he was interested in purchasing the victim’s land in Vashi for the construction of a Jain temple and casually inquired about his whereabouts. Nimbalkar informed him that he was in Mumbai and was proceeding to Pune by car and agreed to meet him on the way.The quartet then trailed Nimbalkar’s car for some time, stopped it in the steel market in Kalamboli and, according to Badala’s statement to the CBI, shot Nimbalkar, who was sleeping in the passenger seat, as well as Kazi. He added that they then travelled towards a village from the Khopoli toll plaza and abandoned the Indica car.While Pande and Tiwari left by a state transport bus, Badala and Chaudhary travelled to Sion by a tempo. Sometime later, they separated and the Dombivli resident fled to his native place in Rajasthan. A fortnight later, he received ₹25 lakh from Shukla near the Fountain Hotel in Borivali, kept ₹5 lakh for himself, and paid the remaining ₹20 lakh to Yadav.The CBI claimed that the motive was rooted in the Kargil funds scam of the early 2000s. Patil, then a state cabinet minister and chairman of the Terna Sugar Cooperative, was accused of misusing funds collected for the families of Kargil war martyrs. The central agency said the alleged fraud, exposed by anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare with information purportedly supplied by Nimbalkar, deepened the rift between the two erstwhile close allies and ultimately led to the double murders.In order to prove its case against the accused persons, the CBI examined 127 witnesses, including noted social worker Kisan Baburao alias Anna Hazare, who claimed that the accused had also planned to get him eliminated.