Daijiworld Media Network - Bengaluru

Bengaluru, Jun 8: A forensic report attached to the chargesheet filed by a Karnataka police special investigation team (SIT) indicates a link between the murders of senior journalist Gauri Lankesh and Kannada scholar and researcher M M Kalburgi.

Both the murders were done using the same 7.65 mm country gun, the report which was placed before the third additional chief metropolitan magistrate in Bengaluru on May 30 states.

Following the murder of Lankesh on September 5, 2017, police recovered the three bullets that pierced her body and a bullet that missed her, along with their four empty cartridges. These were compared with the two bullets and their cartridges from the M M Kalburgi murder that happened on August 30, 2015.

“The bullets in article no 6, 18 and 19 [the Lankesh case] and the bullets in article no 2 and 3 concerned in Vidyagiri P S Cr No 142/15 vide FAS/150/15 [the Kalburgi case] have been fired through a single country made pistol chambered for 7.65 mm caliber pistol cartridges,” the forensic report, enclosed in the chargesheet filed against K T Naveen Kumar states, according to The Indian Express.

The report also contains details of the comparison between the “class characteristic marks” and “individual characteristic marks” of the firing pin on cartridge cases in the two murder cases, which “are tallying”. From the analysis of individual marks on cartridges, the report confirms they were fired from the same 7.65 mm pistol.

The report also states that “microstriation lines”, or microscopic scratches, on the bullets recovered “are tallying among themselves” and with those in the other case.

Lankesh was killed after four bullets were fired at her by an unidentified man wearing a helmet while she was opening the gate to her home after returning from work on the evening of September 5, 2017. The killer is suspected to have arrived on a motorcycle with an accomplice.

According to the Indian Express report, the ballistic evidence also states that the second 7.65 mm country gun used in the Pansare murder was used to kill the rationalist Narendra Dabholkar, 69, in Pune on August 20, 2013.

The report was provided by Kiran Kumar M, assistant director of the firearms section of the State Forensic Science Laboratory, to M N Anucheth, chief investigation officer of the SIT in the Lankesh case.

The Karnataka SIT has arrested five people affiliated to Hindutva groups — Sanatan Sanstha and its affiliate Hindu Janajagruti Samiti (HJS) — who are suspected to have carried out Gauri Lankesh’s murder.

While K T Naveen Kumar from Maddur in Karnataka was arrested first, last week, the SIT arrested Sujeet Kumar from Udupi, Amol Kale from Pune, Amit Degwekar from Ponda and Manohar Edave from Vijayapura.

In a chargesheet filed against K T Naveen Kumar, the SIT stated that Gauri Lankesh was killed for making statements against the Hindu religion and Gods. However, no arrests have been made in Kalburgi murder so far.