Three years after Kendriya Sahitya Akademi awardee and anti-superstition activist Professor M.M. Kalburgi was shot dead at his Dharwad residence in broad daylight, the Supreme Court will hear his wife Umadevi’s plea that the murder, which “left every right-minded person in society shell-shocked”, should not go unpunished.
A three-judge Bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra is scheduled to hear Ms. Umadevi argue on January 10 that the Karnataka police investigation had meandered over the past three years despite assurances that the “biggest manhunt” by the State Criminal Investigation Department was under way.
She believes that the same organisation and killers behind the murders of activists Govind Pansare on February 16, 2015, in Kolhapur and Narendra Dabholkar on August 20, 2013, in Pune are behind her husband’s murder on August 30, 2015.
‘All were threatened’
“All three were abused, threatened by certain sections of society,” she said.
Ms. Umadevi, represented by advocates Krishan Kumar and Abhya Nevagi, submitted that the same weapon was used to kill Pansare and Kalburgi. She alleged that the criminals may be involved in the Goa bomb blasts of 2009 and may have already fled the country.
In her writ petition, she asked the Supreme Court to use its extraordinary constitutional powers to order an investigation by a special team of the Karnataka police under the supervision of a retired Supreme Court or High Court judge. She said the investigation was in a sorry state.
Inter-connected killings
Ms. Umadevi urged the court that since the three murders were inter-connected, a direction should be passed to Maharashtra, Karnataka, Goa, the CBI and the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to conduct a co-ordinated probe into the murder of Kalburgi.
She feared the probe would “casually drift towards its conclusion with the possibility of the offenders going unpunished”.
“Every offence is a crime against society and is unpardonable, yet there are some species of ghastly, revolting and villainous violations of the invaluable right to life, which leave all sensible and right-minded persons of society shell-shocked and traumatised in the body and soul,” she said.
The petition alleged that the NIA had been seeking the arrest of the shooters in both the murders of Dabholkar and Pansare and the Goa case. The blasts were investigated by the NIA. Only some of the accused were tried and the trial had led to their acquittal. The Goa government, she alleged, was “sitting quietly on the specious plea that the probe is with the NIA”.
Ms. Umadevi told The Hindu over telephone: “All we want is justice.”
