Pune: Bombay High Court on Thursday directed “immediate release” of corporator and social worker Laxmi Udaykant Andekar on bail in the Sept 5, 2025, murder of Ayush Komkar (19) in Nana Peth.The bench of Justice Milind Jadhav directed Laxmi not to enter Pune district, ‘except to attend the trial court dates till the completion of trial’. She shall report to the investigating officer once every month on the first Monday. The court declined the state’s plea seeking a stay for four weeks on the bail order.Laxmi is the 12th of the 14 accused facing trial in the murder which, according to Pune police, is a fallout of a property dispute between the siblings of gangster Suryakant alias Bandu Andekar’s family and the latter’s rivalry with a gang from Ambegaon. Suryakant is among the co-accused in jail.A Pune sessions court on April 20, 2026, rejected Laxmi’s bail plea.The HC, while granting the bail, noted that she was incarcerated for the past 13 months and she had undergone a hip replacement and a knee replacement surgery in 2019 and 2022, respectively.The police’s case is that Laxmi was in touch with co-accused and supplier of arms Munaf Pathan as five calls were connected with him in June and July, 2025. Besides, she had mobile phone conversations with co-accused Aman Pathan, one of the two assailants accused of shooting Ayush Komkar dead. Finally, Laxmi and her three sons fled in a private car after the incident and were traced and nabbed from Dwarka in Gujarat.The bench said, “None of the circumstances prima facie show a direct or indirect nexus of applicant (Laxmi) to the alleged conspiracy in the present crime. Needless to state that her complicity in the crime will be proved at trial.” The CDR report relating to the five calls between the applicant and a co-accused will have to be proved at trial, the court said and added that the argument of her conversation with Aman Pathan was “completely far-fetched and cannot be countenanced unless there is a fact situation which shows the nexus of the applicant with the alleged conspiracy in the present crime.”On her fleeing away after the incident, the bench noted, “the first informant-complainant (Ayush’s mother Kalyani) gave a press statement stating that applicant was one of the persons involved in the conspiracy for killing her son due to disputes between the family members. Hence, the applicant apprehending arrest had to flee.”Justice Jadhav said, “The trial shall be adjudicated on the strength of the evidence led and strictly on its own merits being uninfluenced with any of the prima facie observations made hereinabove in this order.”
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