Activists’ murders: SC says 1 agency can probe in case of common thread

New Delhi, December 11

The Supreme Court said on Tuesday that if there is a “common thread” among the murders of social activists Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare, journalist Gauri Lankesh and rationalist MM Kalburgi, then one agency could investigate all four cases.

A bench of Justices UU Lalit and Navin Sinha asked the CBI to inform it by first week of January as to why it should not investigate all four cases if there appeared a link among all the murders.

The counsel for the Maharashtra government informed the court that the CBI is investigating the murder cases of social activist and professor Narendra Dabholkar after the Bombay High Court transferred the probes to the agency.

The court, after perusing the status report of Karnataka Police, said there appeared to be a link between the murders of journalist Gauri Lankesh and rationalist MM Kalburgi.

It asked the Maharashtra government’s counsel about the status of the investigation into the Pansare murder case, to which the counsel said the case was pending before the Kolhapur trial court.

Earlier in the day, Karnataka Police had informed the apex court that there appeared to be a connection between the Lankesh and Kalburgi murder cases.

The state police also told the apex court that it would file a chargesheet in the Kalburgi murder case in three months.

The top court on November 26 had pulled up the Karnataka government for “doing nothing and just fooling around” in the investigation and had indicated that it might transfer the case to the Bombay High Court.

Noted scholar and rationalist MM Kalburgi was killed at Dharwad in 2015; Pansare, a social activist, was also killed the same year. Lankesh, a journalist, was killed on September 5, 2017 in Bengaluru, whereas social activist and rationalist Dabholkar was assassinated on August 20, 2013. PTI