Gauri’s kin: Nab killer in 2 weeks, or bring in CBI
Slain journalist Gauri Lankesh’s siblings, film director Kavitha Lankesh and journalistfilm director Indrajit Lankesh, have set a twoweek deadline for the police to arrest her killer. If it fails, the Lankesh family will move court seeking handing over of the probe to the CBI.
Addressing a press conference Thursday, they said they had no doubts that their older sister’s strong ideological views had led to her murder. Kavitha Lankesh said: “For me, the only culprit has been her ideological differences (sic). Lankesh Patrike was always antiestablishment, anti-fundamentalists and antiextremists.”
About the ongoing SIT probe, she said: “Though we can’t give any deadline to them (SIT), we also cannot wait for two years like in the case of Dr M.M. Kalburgi. If nothing happens in two weeks, we will ask for a CBI probe.”
In what was probably a move to quell reports of an altercation some years ago between Gauri and her brother, Indrajit Lankesh not only sat alongside Kavitha Lankesh in a gesture of solidarity but also joined her in demanding a quick probe. “What the family members want is the immediate arrest of the killers. I have no preference about who should investigate the case. The only intention behind asking for a CBI probe is that we do not want Gauri’s case to end up like Kalburgi’s,” he said.
In an exercise to gather accurate and crucial details in Gauri Lankesh’s murder case, the special investigation team (SIT) formed to probe the case will reconstruct the entire incident at Lankesh’s house in Rajarajeshwari Nagar, where she was shot dead, on Friday.
The exercise will be performed under the guidance of forensic science experts from the Forensic Science Laboratory in Madivala. “Crime scene reconstruction helps to eliminate doubts faced by the investigators. The entire events surrounding the murder will be recreated again and again to come to a conclusion on how exactly the incident has occurred. In the process, we will get an accurate picture of how exactly the crime has taken place. This will further help the investigators in taking the probe forward, as it gives many clues about the incident and the culprits,” an FSL source said.
“We will study the crime scene and the series of events using scientific methods and physical evidence. The reconstruction will help us to decide what has happened and what has not happened. All probabilities will be studied and it includes the movements of the victim and the culprits during the act, how the killers gained entry, which roads they took for entry and exit,” the source said.