scorecardresearch
Thursday, March 28, 2024
Support Our Journalism
HomeIndiaTraining for Kalburgi murder took place in Mangaluru forest: Karnataka SIT

Training for Kalburgi murder took place in Mangaluru forest: Karnataka SIT

An SIT team is headed to Mangaluru to scour the area for possible evidence, particularly bullet cartridges, to link to Kalburgi's alleged killers.

Follow Us :
Text Size:

Bengaluru: The Karnataka Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the murders of journalist Gauri Lankesh and rationalist professor M.M. Kalburgi will now be headed to Mangaluru as it has identified another location that it believes was the training centre for Kalburgi’s killers.

Sources said that during sustained interrogation, one of the suspects revealed that the accused had received training in a forest area near Mangaluru before Kalburgi’s murder in 2016. The SIT believes this could throw up crucial information in identifying all those who could have been involved in the plot and the weapons used for training.

The SIT has so far arrested 16 of the 18 accused of Lankesh’s murder and two accused of allegedly killing Kalburgi. The Karnataka CID has arrested three others in the Kalburgi case. The SIT has identified Parshuram Waghmare as Lankesh’s alleged shooter and Ganesh Miskin as the accused who allegedly shot Kalburgi.

Similar probe had led to Lankesh’s killer

A similar probe had led the Karnataka SIT to discover the country-made pistol used to train journalist Lankesh’s killer before her murder on 5 September 2017.

The SIT had earlier combed the Kineye forest near Belagavi for months and found traces of bullets lodged on trees in the area. It deposited these with the Karnataka FSL but its big break would come from the adjoining state of Maharashtra.

The Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), probing the Govind Pansare and Narendra Dabholkar murders, had recovered 16 illegally manufactured pistols during raids on Sanatan Sanstha members in Nalasopara and Pune.

The guns were sent to the Maharashtra FSL for analysis and a possible link to the Pansare and Dabholkar murder cases but were then handed over to the Karnataka FSL when no link was found.

Ballistic experts during their detailed analysis found that the impressed action marks — the firing pin impressions and breech marks in one of the pistols — exactly matched the cartridges that were submitted by the Karnataka SIT from its haul in the Belagavi forest.


Also read: Chidanand Rajghatta’s book combines memories of Gauri Lankesh with cultural controversies


Shooting camps held before murders

The Karnataka SIT claims the accused conducted shooting camps before the murders. According to the chargesheet in the Lankesh case, the SIT said that a total of 13 shooting camps were held between 2011 and 2017.

It now hopes that it will find evidence in Mangaluru to help strengthen its case in the Kalburgi murder.

The SIT had hit a major roadblock when a CBI probe indicated that the country-made 7.65 mm pistols allegedly used to kill Pansare, Dabholkar, Kalburgi and Lankesh could have been destroyed by another accused, Sharad Kalaskar, who was arrested in May by the Maharashtra ATS.

Special CBI public prosecutor, Prakash Suryawanshi, had submitted to a Pune court that Kalaskar had allegedly confessed to the Karnataka SIT that Sanjeev Punalekar, a Sanathan lawyer who was recently arrested in the Dabholkar case, had allegedly advised him to dismantle and destroy the four firearms used in the killings by dumping them in a creek between Pune and Nalasopara.

“On 23 July 2018, Kalaskar retrieved four country-made pistols, dismantled them and threw them into a water body between Nalasopara and Pune,” Suryawanshi had told the court.

Subscribe to our channels on YouTube, Telegram & WhatsApp

Support Our Journalism

India needs fair, non-hyphenated and questioning journalism, packed with on-ground reporting. ThePrint – with exceptional reporters, columnists and editors – is doing just that.

Sustaining this needs support from wonderful readers like you.

Whether you live in India or overseas, you can take a paid subscription by clicking here.

Support Our Journalism

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Most Popular