‘You’ve Done Nothing’: SC Slams Karnataka Cops Over Kalburgi Case

SC also asked the Karnataka government to submit a progress report on the course of the investigation in two weeks.

On 29 August 2015, MM Kalburgi, a social activist and noted Kannada writer, was shot dead at his residence.

(Photo: The Quint/Liju Joseph)

Over three years after Sahitya Akademi award winner, academic and rationalist MM Kalburgi was murdered, the Supreme Court on Monday, 26 November, came down heavily on the Karnataka Police for not progressing on the investigation.

The apex court asked the state government to submit a progress report on the course of the investigations in two weeks and said the court might transfer the case to the Bombay High Court on account of the government’s laxity.

“You haven’t done anything, investigated nothing, you are only trying to pull out,” News18 quoted the Supreme Court bench as saying.

The Bombay High Court is overseeing investigations on the murders of rationalists — Professor Narendra Dabholkar in Pune in August 2013 and CPI leader Govind Pansare in Kolhapur in February 2015.

In January 2018, Kalburgi’s wife Uma Devi had approached the Supreme Court expressing dissatisfaction with the CID investigation and had sought a probe by a special investigation team (SIT) headed by a retired judge. She had suggested that there was a similarity in the murders of Dabholkar and Pansare.

MM Kalburgi was killed on 30 August 2015 at his Dharwad residence by an unidentified gunman who had knocked on his door and then opened fire.

Three days after his death, the Cabinet led by the then Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had handed the investigation to the state’s Crime Investigation Department.

The Supreme Court’s observations come in the wake of the Special Investigation Team, which is probing the murder of noted journalist-activist Gauri Lankesh, filing a chargesheet that said that the gun used for murdering Gauri was also used for killing Kalburgi and Pansare.

A source in the CID that is probing the Kalburgi murder has citied helplessness in the case.

The source claimed that even though there are clues to suggest who the perpetrators are, it cannot be proven in the court of law.

The officer said that the only way they could establish the case in a court of law is by getting the murder weapon and for the same, it is coordinating with the SIT probing the Gauri Lankesh case.

Earlier in September, the CID had taken 14-day custody of the two accused in the Gauri case — Ganesh Miskin and Amit Baddi.

Previously, officials of the SIT probing the journalist’s murder had said that those two accused in the Lankesh case had admitted to carrying out a recce at Kalburgi’s residence.

(Published in an arrangement with The News Minute.)