A week after M.M. Kalburgi was shot dead at his residence in Kalyan Nagar, Dharwad, the probe into the case has almost hit dead end, leaving investigators clueless.
While the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is yet to take up the case, the fact that the investigations by the State police has made no headway so far has raised fears that the probe may be similar to those into the murders of Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare, which are still inconclusive.
Apart from the recreation of two portraits of the assailants, “we haven’t been able to conclusively establish whether the assailants spoke in Kannada or Marathi, which could have given a direction to the probe,” a senior official said, adding that as the days passed hope was fading.
In the absence of solid leads from the crime scene or the call detail records (CDR) of Kalburgi, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) presently probing into the case is working to eliminate various suspects.
A senior official involved in the probe said they had by now ruled out property dispute within the family and Kalburgi’s run in with government officials when he headed two literary research institutes.
An intelligence official said the probe was heading to the conclusion that right-wing fringe elements may have been behind the murder. However, multiple teams working on the suspected involvement of right-wing forces in the State have failed to achieve a breakthrough in the case. The CDR of notable right-wing suspects with criminal antecedents were scrutinised and turned to be a dead end as well.
A senior official in Dharwad said while there were no intelligence reports alerting them of such a possible attack on the scholar, he claimed that the State intelligence had not come up with anything significant on right-wing fringe elements after the murder.
The State police are also looking forward to the CBI taking over the case.
“The CBI has better resources to probe pan India right-wing fringe elements suspected to be at work in the case. The CBI is also probing into the Dhabolkar murder case,” a retired intelligence official said.
Families await breakthrough
Girish Patattanashetti reports from Hubballi:
The families of Kalburgi, Dabholkar and Pansare have decided to wait for another week to see if the CID sleuths of Karnataka make a breakthrough in the case before taking a delegation to meet Chief Minister Siddaramaiah.
Megha Pansare, the daughter-in-law of slain rationalist Pansare, was in Dharwad on Sunday along with a few others to meet the family of Kalburgi. Megha Pansare spoke to Kalburgi’s wife Umadevi and son Srivijay and sought details from them on progress of the investigation.
