BENGALURU: The killer contraband 7.65mm pistol, which was recently recovered by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) from the seabed in a creek near Thane, in Maharashtra, “may have also been used in the assassinations of editor-cum-activist Gauri Lankesh and Kannada litterateur MM Kalburgi”, sources told TNIE.
The CBI has sent the country-made pistol for ballistic examination to verify if it was used for killing Pune-based rationalist Narendra Dabholkar in August 2013.
“One contraband 7.65mm pistol was used in the three murder cases -- of Dabholkar, Kalburgi and Gauri. We have to wait for the forensic report of the pistol. Subject to verification, the SIT will add the ballistic report to their chargesheets in their two cases,” said the source.
The Karnataka Special Investigation Team (SIT) is probing the Kalburgi and Gauri murder cases, CBI is investigating the Dabholkar assassination case and Maharashtra SIT is probing the Kolhapur-based Communist leader Govind Pansare’s murder case.
Sharad Kalaskar, who allegedly shot Dabholkar and is accused in the murders of Gauri, Kalburgi and Pansare, had reportedly told the CBI that on the alleged advice of Sanatan Sanstha’s counsel Sanjeev Punalekar, he had dismantled and thrown four pistols in a creek near Thane. “One of these was the pistol used in the murders of Dabholkar, Gauri and Kalburgi,” said the officer.
Kalaskar was arrested in August 2018 by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) in the Palghar arms haul case. In October 2018, he had shown the SIT the spot from where he had thrown the killer pistol along with three other countrymade pistols, after dismantling them. “Kalaskar threw the four pistols from a bridge into Thane creek on August 23, when he was returning to Nalasopara from Pune,” the CBI lawyer had told the Pune court earlier.
Kalaskar had reportedly handled the firearms used in the Gauri case and had allegedly ferried Kalburgi’s killer Ganesh Miskin on the motorcycle to the scholar’s house in Dharwad, where Miskin had shot Kalburgi dead inside his house on August 30, 2015.
The CBI had sent a request to the Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change (MoEF) for permission to search the spot near Thane creek, where Kalaskar had reportedly thrown the four dismantled countrymade pistols. The CBI had used the expertise of a Dubai-based company, which had in turn used hi-tech Norwegian equipment to detect the alleged killer pistol in a 40-feet thick layer of sand on the seabed at an estimated cost around Rs 7.5 crore, which is to be shared by the governments of Karnataka and Maharashtra, said sources.