CBI finds pistol that may link murders of 4 writeractivists

Weapon sent for ballistic examination

PUNE/NEW DELHI: Federal investigators announced on Tuesday that they have recovered a countrymade pistol that was possibly used in the murder of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar, whose killing in 2013 was the first of four assassinations suspected to be linked to fundamentalist rightwing organisations.

Dabholkar was killed on August 20, 2013 by two men on a motorcycle while he was on his morning walk – a modus operandi similar to the murders of activists Govind Pansare and MM Kalburgi in 2015, and journalist Gauri Lankesh in 2017.

According to Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officers working on the Dabholkar case, the gun may be one of two 7.65mm-bore pistols that were

common to all four murders. It was found following leads given by Sachin Prakasrao Andure, one of the men who allegedly carried out the hit on Dabholkar, following his arrest on Saturday.

“The CBI on Tuesday morning recovered a pistol, a khukhri (a knife) and three live rounds from the premises of a friend of a relative

of Andure. The weapon is being sent for ballistic examination,” CBI spokesman Abhishek Dayal said. Dabholkar, Pansare and Kalburgi were strong critics of religion, particularly practices such as black magic and superstition-based beliefs. Lankesh, as a journalist and editor, often wrote against extremist Hindutva politics. According to CBI officials based in Delhi, the four may have been killed by different shooters but the two sets of weapons may have been the same. The people arrested in connection with the murders were all at one point or another linked to the Sanatan Sansthan, a right-wing extremist Hindu group.

In statements that Andure has made since his arrest, he corroborated the agency’s finding that Virendra Tawde – a member of Sanatan Sansthan’s offshoot Hindu Jan Jagruti Samiti who has been indicted for Pansare’s murder – was the main conspirator in Dabholkar’s murder.

“It is quite clear that the same set of conspirators are involved in all four murders and they belong to same module of extremists, which is very different from the module of Hindu extremists behind blasts in Malegaon or Ajmer Sharif,” said the CBI official, who asked not to be named.