Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Thursday has expressed surprise over the failure of the CBI and the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Maharashtra police to get a ballistics report from the Karnataka Criminal Investigation Department (CID) that could show possible links between the sensational murders of rationalists Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare and Kannada researcher M M Kalburgi.
“Are you pursuing it? How can an agency like the CBI which falls under the Centre cannot procure the report (from the Karnataka police)? We are surprised that the CBI is making such a grievance (on non-receipt of report). We are surprised that the Karnataka CID is not co-operating with a prime agency like the CBI,” a division bench of Justices R V More and Justice V L Achliya remarked adding that the non-coperation from the Karnataka CID is hampering the probe.
The Court said that the Director General of Police of Maharashtra, the Director of CBI should take up this issue with the Director General of Police, Karnataka.
While the Maharashtra government has handed over the Dabholkar murder to the CBI to investigate, Pansare’s killing is being probed by the SIT.
The Karnataka CID is investigating the murder of Kalburgi.
The CBI and the SIT told the court they were still awaiting the report from the Karnataka CID despite sending repeated reminders to it.
Advocate Abhay Nevgi, appearing for the families of Dabholkar and Pansare, quoted media reports as saying that the State Forensic Science Laboratory in Bengaluru had suggested the bullets recovered from the crime spots in these three cases were fired from the same weapon.
Dabholkar, 67, an anti-superstition activist, was shot dead by two gunmen in Pune on June 20, 2013.
Pansare, 82, a leader of the Communist Party of India, and his wife Uma were attacked by two motor-cycle borne men on February 16, 2015, near his home in Kolhapur. He died four days later.
Kalburgi, 76, had run-ins with Hindutva groups over the years. He was shot dead at his home in Dharwad on August 30, 2015.
