New Delhi: Over three years after professor M.M. Kalburgi’s killing, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of Karnataka police has identified the first suspects. CID has sought the custody of Ganesh Miskin and Amit Baddi, who are in a Bengaluru jail after they were arrested by the Special Investigations Team (SIT) probing the killing of journalist Gauri Lankesh, according to an Indian Express report.
A Hubbali court is likely to provide custody of the two suspect to CID on September 15. CID has also requested the SIT for its report on the Lankesh killing. According to the Indian Express, Miskin transported Lankesh’s shooters to her house on a motorcycle, while Baddi helped them get away in a car after she was shot.
Links between the two murders have already been established, as a forensic report had stated that the same gun likely killed Lankesh and Kalburgi. SIT’s interrogation of Miskin, Baddi and Amol Kale – who is the suspected mastermind of Lankesh’s killing – revealed that they also knew details about Kalburgi’s murder.
Karnataka police are now making sense of the complex web, which has been aided by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad’s (ATS) arrest of seven people accused of a conspiracy to carry out blasts across the state. A cache of weapons was seized and the SIT and CID are looking into the possibility that one of them was used to murder Lankesh and Kalburgi.
One of the arrested persons, Sharad Kalaskar, is said to have shot and killed rationalist Narendra Dabholkar in 2013. Kalaskar was named by the SIT as the 15th accused in Lankesh’s murder. Kalaskar is currently in the CBI’s custody, which is investigating the Dabholkar case. He was in Bengaluru on the day Lankesh was shot and the motorcycle that the assassins used to get to her house may have been ferried to the city by Kalaskar. In all, three people arrested by ATS have been named by the SIT as accused in the Lankesh killing.
Involvement of Sanatan Sanstha and Hindu Janajagruti Samiti
A common thread among the investigations of the four agencies – SIT, CBI, ATS and CID – seems to be that most of the suspects are said to have links with either the Sanatan Sanstha or Hindu Janajagruti Samiti (HJS). The HJS is an affiliate of the Sanatan Sanstha.
Kale, the mastermind of the Lankesh killing, was a former HJS convenor. CID has now established that he is involved in Kalburgi’s assassination. Virendra Tawde, an ENT specialist, is the ‘kingpin’ behind Dabholkar’s murder. He is a member of Sanatan Sanstha. Tawde is also a suspect in the murder of communist Govind Pansare. Vaibhav Raut, from whose house the ATS seized a vast quantity of explosives on August 10, was a regular at conferences organised by the Sanatan Sanstha and is believed to have provided logistical support to the organisation.
In a recent press conference, Sanatan Sanstha denied that the killers of Dabholkar and Lankesh were members of the organisation. “None of them have ever been a part of our organisation. They must have attended our meetings and must have been staunch supporters of Hindutva, but that does not mean they have been a part of Sanathan Sanstha,” said national spokesperson Chetan Rajhans.