Gauri Lankesh case: SIT awaits ballistic reports on 16 pistols

Bangalore :21/03/2011. Journalist, Gauri Lankesh in Bangalore on 21st March, 2011. Photo K . Bhagya Prakash

The Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the murder of journalist Gauri Lankesh is now awaiting ballistic reports on the 16 country-made pistols recovered from three right-wing activists arrested by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS).

Acting on information gathered from those arrested in the Gauri case, the Maharashtra ATS arrested Vaibhav Raut, 40, Sharad Kasalkar, 25, and Sudhanwa Gondhalekar, 39, and recovered a cache of low-intensity bombs and country-made pistols. The three are closely linked with Amol Kale, the alleged kingpin of the Gauri murder.

These pistols are now being matched with the empty cartridges found at the crime scenes of the murders of Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare, M.M. Kalburgi, and Gauri Lankesh.

A comparison of cartridges at these crime scenes had earlier revealed that the pistol used to kill Dabholkar was used to kill Pansare along with another pistol. The second pistol in the Pansare case was used to kill Kalburgi and Gauri.

Any ballistic match of these cartridges with any of the 16 pistols will crack all the four murder cases, officials said.

A senior official said that apart from the 16 pistols, the ATS officials had recovered a few pistol spare parts, which are also being subjected to ballistic tests as the police suspect that the weapons may have been dismantled.

When a bullet is fired from a weapon, it leaves with striation marks, which are unique and considered a fingerprint of the pistol. Ballistic tests will now compare the striation marks of all the 16 pistols and the cartridges recovered from various crime scenes.

Investigators are now looking into why the same weapon was used, when country-made pistols were easily available.

Senior SIT officials said the murders were at one level political, and the use of the same weapon was probably to let the world know the same gang was executing these intellectuals.

Sources also said the accused termed these weapons ‘Sudarshana Chakra’ — a mythical disc in the hand of Lord Krishna that always hit the target and came back to him.