Bengaluru, Dec 20 (PTI): Karnataka Home Minister G Parameshwara on Saturday said that the CID is on the verge of cracking the case of rationalist M M Kalburgi's murder.

Investigation is going on in the right direction and the CID has gathered some vital clues and leads. It is on the verge of cracking the case of Kalburgi's, he said.

The 77-year-old rationalist was shot dead by two unidentified men at Dharwad in north Karnataka in August this year. This led to prominent literary and theatre personalities returning their awards and targeting the Modi government, under whose watch they claimed "intolerance was rising."

The cracking of the Kalburgi case will also throw light on the murders of rationalists Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Panasare, Parameshwara said.

Kalburgi was an associate of Govind Pansare of Kolhapur in Maharashtra, who had also fallen prey to a similar attack in February. He had drawn ire of some right-wing Hindu groups with his remarks. Another rationalist, Narendra Dabholkar, was murdered in Pune in 2013 in a similar fashion.

The minister said that Maharashtra police had cooperated with Karnataka investigating authorities in providing certain details.

On reports about a top-secret nuclear city to produce thermonuclear weapons coming up in Karnataka, Parameshwara said, "... The only thing we know is that land was given to the defence establishments and that the DRDO was setting up something."

A leading American foreign policy journal had claimed that India is building a top-secret nuclear city to produce thermonuclear weapons and when completed in 2017, the facility would be the subcontinent's "largest military-run" complex of nuclear centrifuges.

The investigative report published in the journal also claimed that the secret city reportedly coming up at Challakere in Karnataka, could "upgrade" the country as a nuclear power and unsettle its two major neighbours - Pakistan and China.

Reacting to protests by locals over the reported facility, he said, as of now, no law and order problems has come to the notice of the government.