Dattatraya Parchure

The trial of persons accused of participation and complicity in Gandhi's assassination at the Special Court in Red Fort Delhi on 27 May 1948. Front row, left to right: Nathuram Godse, Narayan Apte, and Vishnu Ramkrishna Karkare. Seated behind, left to right: Digambar Badge, Shankar Kistaiya, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Gopal Godse, and Dattatraya Sadashiv Parachure. Dattatraya Sadashiv Parchure (1902–1985) was a doctor and a member of the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha. He was one of several people accused of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. Initially sentenced to life imprisonment by a lower court, he was acquitted upon appeal by the Punjab High Court.

Personal life Parchure was born in 1902, in a Hindu Kokanstha Brahmin family from the state of Maharashtra. His father was a senior officer in the state education department. As a teenager, he was keen on wrestling, and won the Gwalior State title in his late teens. By 1937, he became disillusioned with Western medicine, and instead began practising Ayurvedic medicine in Gwalior where his family lived, specialising as a paediatrician. His disillusionment was related to his growing interest at the time in Hindu revivalism and Hindu Nationalism. He founded the Gwalior branch of the Mahasabha in 1935, and was involved with shifting the organisation to a more hardline and militant outlook. He travelled through the rural areas of the state promoting Hindutva ideology, which had first been expounded by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. Although proposals to merge the two were discussed, they never came to fruition. Parchure reportedly celebrated Gandhi's assassination by distributing sweets. On 3 February he was detained and was charged with assisting in Gandhi's murder by providing Godse with the murder weapon. On 18 February 1948 he was formally arrested on charges of criminal conspiracy under section 120B, 109 and 114 of Indian Penal Code.

Before the Magistrate of Gwalior, he made a confession in which he accepted the charges laid on him. He stated that he had acquired the pistol from Gangadhar Dandavate, and passed it on to Godse. Godse, along with Narayan Apte, was stated to have travelled from Delhi to Gwalior by train on 28 January 1948 to obtain a pistol. Godse wanted an automatic pistol to replace his own unreliable pistol. Parchure offered him the semi-automatic Beretta, which Godse experimented with in Parchure's back yard, and then purchased for 300. Parchure stated that the pistol had originally belonged to Deshmukh, an officer in the Gwalior State Army who had acquired the pistol in Germany. Godse and Apte then left for Delhi on 29 January. The sentences of the other five were retained by the High Court.

After his release from jail, Parchure was banned from Gwalior. However, he returned there in 1952 on the condition of not participating in political activities. He later restarted his medical practice, and died in Gwalior in 1985.