SC closes monitoring Kalburgi murder case

The Supreme Court on Friday closed a matter related to monitoring of the killing of rationalist M M Kalburgi in 2015 in Dharwad as well as that of Prof Narendra Dabholkar and Comrade Govind Pansare in Maharashtra.

A bench of Justices R F Nariman and
S Ravindra Bhat noted that the case related to Kalburgi has been
assigned to the sessions court after filing of the charge sheet.

The court, however, noted two accused had absconded and could not be arrested till date as per reports but since the case has been sent for trial, there was no point monitoring it. The NIA had also filed a status report with regard to other cases.

Senior advocate Devadatt Kamat, appearing for the Karnataka government, submitted that the High Court had also stopped monitoring of the matter. The top court had in early last year directed that the Karnataka High Court’s Dharwad bench to monitor the probe.

The Karnataka police SIT, which investigated murder of Gauri Lankesh and filed the charge sheet, was allowed to take over the Kalburgi case as well.

Umadevi, wife of Prof Kalburgi, in her 2017 plea drew parallel between Kalburgi’s murder and killings of Prof Dabholkar and Comrade Pansare in Maharashtra, and sought an SIT probe by a retired SC judge or a high court judge. She asked the court to monitor the probe till it reached its logical conclusion.

The court had earlier sought to know if there was a ‘common thread’ in murder cases of Communist leader Pansare and rationalist Dabholkar in Maharashtra, and Kannada writer Kalburgi and journalist- activist Gauri Lankesh in Karnataka.