Dilip Dhyanoba Sutar was one of four commercial art students who were sentenced to death for a series of killings that frightened the city of Pune between January 1976 and March 1977. The other three were Rajendra Jakkal, Shantaram Kanhoji Jagtap and Munawar Harun Shah. All four studied at the Abhinav Kala Mahavidyalaya, an art college on Tilak Road, and were known there for drinking and for stealing two-wheelers, according to a 2020 agency report printed in The Free Press Journal.
The sessions trial at Poona (Pune) became known as the Joshi-Abhyankar Massacre case. In the words of the Supreme Court of India, the case arose out of a wide criminal conspiracy in which the accused carried out six incidents, causing ten murders and committing robbery and dacoity. In the court record Sutar is original accused No. 2.
The first person to die was a classmate of the four, named in the 2020 agency report as Prasad Hedge. The report says the four had planned to hold him for ransom. He was strangled on January 16, 1976.
Between October 31, 1976 and March 23, 1977 nine more people were killed in a series of house break-ins in Pune, during which valuables were taken. The same report says the victims were strangled. The names and ages of these nine victims have not been reported.
The Supreme Court did not apportion the ten deaths among the four men. It stated only that each of the three petitioners before it in 1983, Sutar, Jagtap and Shah, had taken part in at least seven of the ten murders.
The killings, The News Minute wrote in 2020, sent shock waves across Maharashtra. In Pune, residents reportedly stopped going out after six in the evening. Police formed special teams and called in officers who had earlier served in the city.
S.C., who was himself accused in the case, turned approver. What his evidence covered has not been reported, and the exact date of the arrests is not on record.
On September 28, 1978 the court at the end of the sessions trial at Poona sentenced each of the four to death. A retired assistant commissioner of police, Sharad Avasthi, who was an inspector at the time, recalled in 2020 that a large crowd gathered at the court when the sentences were passed.
The Bombay High Court confirmed the death sentences on April 6, 1979. The Supreme Court of India dismissed the special leave petitions of the condemned men on November 17, 1980, which in its later words ended the normal judicial process in the case. Review petitions were dismissed on February 11, 1981.
The men continued to file petitions. Jagtap and Shah brought fresh writ petitions that the Supreme Court dismissed on February 5, 1982, and a review sought by Jagtap was dismissed on April 1, 1982. Shah filed another writ petition on December 3, 1982 and Jagtap on January 17, 1983. Sutar filed his own writ petition on April 12, 1983.
The three petitions were heard together by Justices V. D. Tulzapurkar and Ranganath Misra. Counsel for the men asked that the death sentences be reduced to life imprisonment. They relied on the five years the petitioners had spent under sentence of death, on the claim that Shah's part in the crimes had been minor, and on the Constitution Bench ruling that the death penalty should be kept for the rarest of rare cases. The court was told that Shah was writing the Quran in Marathi, learning Arabic and studying homeopathy in prison, and that Jagtap had written a book in Marathi, translated a book on yoga, and was studying Buddhism. Counsel for the State told the court that the mercy petitions had been dismissed.
On April 18, 1983 the court dismissed all three petitions. Relying on its decision in Sher Singh v. State of Punjab, delivered the previous month, it held that time spent under sentence of death was a relevant factor but not a decisive one, and that part of the delay was of the petitioners' own making, because of their successive petitions. The judges remarked that the scholarly work described to them suggested the prospect of execution was not weighing on the two men. On the merits, the court found that the scale of the crimes and the manner in which they were carried out placed the case within the rarest of rare category, said that leniency would be misplaced, and directed that the sentences be carried out without further loss of time in accordance with law.
Sutar, Jakkal, Jagtap and Shah were hanged together at Yerawada Central Jail in Pune in 1983. The reported date differs. The Free Press Journal and The News Minute, writing in January 2020 as four men convicted in the 2012 Delhi case known as Nirbhaya faced execution, gave October 25, 1983, and said it was the last time four prisoners had been executed together in India. An IANS report published ahead of the 2023 web series and The Bridge Chronicle in 2026 gave November 27, 1983.
The case has been the subject of several screen works. Paanch, the first feature by the director Anurag Kashyap, was based on the 1976 and 1977 murders; IANS reported that the film was never released because of its graphic content, and The Statesman later reported plans to bring it to theaters 22 years after it was made. Vivek Wagh's Marathi documentary Jakkal won the award for Best Investigative Film at the 67th National Film Awards, for films of 2019, a Rajat Kamal shared by the producer, Neon Reel Creation, and the director. Wagh then created a Marathi web series on the case, which IANS reported was due to launch in October 2023. In 2026 The Bridge Chronicle listed the case among the most important death-penalty cases in Pune's history.
January 1976 to March 1977: ten people killed in six incidents in Pune, with robbery and dacoity.
January 16, 1976: a classmate of the four is killed.
October 31, 1976 to March 23, 1977: nine more people killed in house break-ins.
September 28, 1978: Sutar, Jakkal, Jagtap and Shah sentenced to death at the sessions trial at Poona.
April 6, 1979: the Bombay High Court confirms the death sentences.
November 17, 1980: the Supreme Court of India dismisses the special leave petitions.
February 11, 1981: review petitions dismissed.
February 5, 1982: writ petitions of Jagtap and Shah dismissed.
April 1, 1982: Jagtap's review petition dismissed.
April 12, 1983: Sutar files his writ petition.
April 18, 1983: the Supreme Court dismisses the petitions of Sutar, Jagtap and Shah.
1983 (October 25 or November 27, by different reports): the four are hanged together at Yerawada Central Jail, Pune.