SC HANDS OVER KALBURGI CASE TO SIT PROBING LANKESH KILLING

NEWDELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday transferred the MM Kalburgi murder probe to the special investigation team (SIT) handling the murder case of journalist-activist Gauri Lankesh after the Karnataka government submitted that the two incidents had common links.

Kalburgi, a former vice-chancellor of Kannada University in Hampi, and a well-known epigraphist, was shot dead at his residence in Kalyan Nagar in Dharwad, Karnataka, on August 30, 2015. He was a Sahitya Akadmi award-winning scholar of old Kannada literature.

Karnataka’s crime investigation department was probing Kalburgi’s killing, while the SIT was looking into the Lankesh murder case. Lankesh was shot dead in September 2017 in Bengaluru.

A bench of justices R F Nariman and Vineet Saran said on Tuesday that Karnataka High Court’s Dharwad bench will monitor the SIT probe into Kalburgi’s killing. During the hearing, the judges said that if the killings of Kalburgi, Lankesh and social activist Govind Pansara as well as rationalist Narendra Dabholkar have common links, then one agency should probe all the cases and one high court should monitor it.

The Karnataka government counsel submitted that while an SIT is probing the Lankesh case, a Maharashtra team was investigating the Pansare’s murder and the Central Bureau of Investigation was looking into the Dabholkar case.

The court order came on a petition by Kalburgi’s wife, who claimed there was a common link between her husband’s murder and the deaths of Dabholkar and Pansare. She had demanded a CBI probe into her husband’s death.