Three years ago, on the morning of August 30, 2015, a man knocked on the door of rationalist M.M. Kalburgi’s Kalyan Nagar residence in Dharwad, shot him point blank, and escaped on a bike driven by his associate. Since then, the Criminal Investigation Department that was handling the probe made little headway in the case. All leads had gone cold, and the killers and conspirators remained at large. However, it has now got a fresh lease of life with leads emerging out of the investigation into the murder of journalist-activist Gauri Lankesh.
“Ganesh Miskin and Amit Baddi, who are part of the team that killed Gauri Lankesh, hail from Hubballi. They have confessed to carrying out a recce of Kalburgi’s residence in Dharwad before he was killed,” said sources in both the Special Investigation Team probing the Gauri case and the Criminal Investigation Department that is handling the Kalburgi case.
While the CID is preparing to seek custody of these two men, a senior official said that they could not rely on the statements of those accused in Gauri murder case alone as they could be misleading the police. “We are collecting evidence. The foot soldiers for the Kalburgi killing seem to have come from Bombay-Karnataka region, especially Hubballi-Dharwad,” the official said.
Ballistic reports had established that the same weapon was used to carry out the hits on Kalburgi and Gauri. And the SIT probe has now revealed that the same unnamed gang was also behind the murders of Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare — a gang in which Amol Kale and Amit Degvekar were the key conspirators.
Another accused in the Gauri case, Rajesh Bangera, 51, who hails from Madikeri and is the alleged arms trainer of the gang, has also reportedly told the police that he trained the shooter in Kalburgi case as well.
Of the 12 arrested for Gauri’s murder, five of them — Amol Kale, Amit Degvekar, Rajesh Bangera, Ganesh Miskin, and Amit Baddi — are persons of interest for the Kalburgi probe.
The CID has questioned all five while they were in judicial custody and recorded their statements, but officials said they were not cooperative. However, the Central Bureau of Investigation has sought custody of three accused — Kale, Degvekar and Bangera — to question them in connection with the murder of Narendra Dabholkar. For now, the CID will is seeking custody of Ganesh Miskin and Amit Baddi.
“Based on the leads emerging from SIT probe, we have now narrowed down the suspects to nearly 20, many of whom have already been arrested in the Gauri case,” the CID official said. Sources said SIT had provided a shortlist of around 10 suspects and their code names used in the diaries recovered from Amol Kale and his conspirators. The shooter and biker are suspected to be among them. Their code names have to be decoded, their real identities ascertained and their role probed. “We are confident of a breakthrough in the case shortly,” a senior CID official said.
