Search for gun, ammo used to kill Gauri Lankesh unearths weapons racket

Mangalore Today News Network

Bengaluru, Oct 21, 2017 : The investigation in the killing of journalist-activist Gauri Lankesh, 55, outside her home in Bengaluru on September 5 has resulted in collateral unearthing of an illegal gun racket run from Vijayapura district in north Karnataka. With inputs from the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of Karnataka Police, which is trying to find the source of the 7.65-mm countrymade pistol and ammunition used to kill Lankesh to get to the suspects, Vijayapura police have arrested 12 people suspected to be involved in the illegal gun market.

 

The police also seized 20 countrymade weapons and 49 rounds of ammunition. Inspector General of Police (northern range) Ramachandra Rao announced the arrests and seizures on October 16 at a media conference in Vijayapura (earlier called Bijapur). He said that the arrests were made after the local police received tip-off about the sale of illegal weapons in Indi region of the district.

Sources in the SIT indicated that inputs on the illegal gun racket in Vijayapura emerged during the course of the investigation into the journalist’s murder. One of the angles the SIT has been pursuing in its probe into Lankesh’s murder is the weapon used to kill her.

With field reports suggesting that Indi and Zalki regions of Vijayapura, on the Karnataka-Maharashtra border, are key areas for trade in illegal guns and ammunition, the SIT is trying to find sources of the countrymade weapon and the ammunition used to kill Lankesh as part of a larger effort to find her killers.

The probe focussed on Vijayapura after the SIT found the district to be a key point in illegal gun trade.
Investigations by Vijayapura police found that weapons and ammunition arriving in the district were mostly from Dhar region of Madhya Pradesh. The police subsequently arrested one Bachan Singh Sardar, from Madhya Pradesh, for allegedly supplying countrymade pistols to parts of northern Karnataka, including Vijayapura, Bidar and Kalaburagi.

Following Bachan Singh’s interrogation, the police arrested several suspected middlemen from Indi taluk in Vijayapura on the charge of selling guns to people in Karnataka and Maharashtra. Among those arrested in the illegal gun racket case are Kushappa Talwar, 45, from Chikkodi in Belagavi, and Basappa Naikodi, 33, from Sindgi in Vijayapura.

One of the key findings in the SIT probe so far is forensic evidence that the gun used to kill her was the same as the one used to kill Kannada scholar M M Kalburgi on August 30, 2015 in Dharwad. The finding has led investigators to suspect that the same set of people killed Lankesh and Kalburgi.

With the analysis of bullets and cartridges in the Karnataka murders matching with the analysis of those used in the Maharashtra murders of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar in 2013 and Leftist thinker Govind Pansare in 2015, investigators feel one common group is involved in all four killings.

The CBI’s investigation in the murder of Dabholkar has found that an activist from right-wing Hindutva outfit Sanatan Sanstha, Dr Virendrasingh Tawde, was trying desperately a couple of months before the murder in 2013 to find a source of supply of gun cartridges, which he had codenamed “chocolates’’. Tawde has been arrested for the conspiracy to murder Dabholkar.

courtesy:Indian Express