Two eyewitnesses have reportedly identified Amol Kale — the prime accused in the Gauri Lankesh case — as one of the men who did a reconnaissance of scholar M.M. Kalburgi’s house in Dharwad a fortnight before he was assassinated on August 30, 2015. According to sources in the Special Investigation Team that had recently taken over the probe, eyewitnesses have also identified Gauri case accused Praveen Chatur to the hit, as well as Ganesh Miskin as the shooter.
Kalburgi’s wife Uma Kalburgi, who answered the door to the shooter that fateful day nearly four years ago, has now identified Miskin, 28, as the man who shot her husband. “She positively identified him as the shooter,” a source said. Miskin hails from Hubballi and has been a key accused in the Gauri Lankesh murder case. He is allegedly the biker who ferried the hitman, Parashuram Waghmore, to Gauri Lankesh’s house the night she was assassinated on September 5, 2017.
Two other eyewitnesses in the Kalburgi case — a paan shop owner and a supervisor working at an under-construction building next to scholar’s residence — have identified Chatur, 28, as the biker who ferried Miskin. “Both are positive of the identification. The supervisor who was watering the building for curing that morning turned his head instinctively as he heard the gunshots and saw Miskin walk up to the bike on which Chatur was seated,” a senior official said.
Significantly, these two eyewitnesses have helped the SIT link the alleged kingpin of the gang Amol Kale to the scene of the crime. “One of the eyewitnesses said they had seen Praveen Chatur near Kalburgi’s residence a few days before the murder as well. We suspected that he was doing a recce of the house. From our investigation of the Gauri Lankesh case, we knew that Amol Kale used to be present for the last recce. We arranged a test identification parade and the eyewitness identified Amol Kale as the man with Praveen Chatur two weeks before the murder,” the official said.
The SIT is now working on a war-footing to file the charge-sheet in the case by mid-August. “The challenge in the case is to get hard evidence as it has almost been four years since the crime. Though we may not be able to establish the conspiracy in such detail as it was done in the Gauri Lankesh case, the eyewitnesses in Kalburgi case will definitely lead to conviction of the accused. There were eyewitnesses identifying the killers in the Gauri murder case,” a senior official said.
Tawde unlikely to be made accused
The SIT probe has now established that the “unnamed gang” formed to kill “durjans” (those who they deemed anti-Hindu despite being a Hindu) in 2011 was led by Veerendra Tawde, a Pune-based ENT surgeon.
Kale allegedly took over leadership of the gang and continued with the hits after Tawde was arrested by the CBI in June 2016 in connection with the murder of Narendra Dabholkar. This suggests Tawde was leading the gang when it killed Kalburgi on August 30, 2015.
However, SIT sources said the evidence to link him to the murder has been hard to come by after nearly four years, “Kale has refused to confess to the crimes in both the Gauri and Kalburgi murder cases. He is unlikely to be made an accused in the Kalburgi case,” a source said.
