by Johnson T A
Shivaji Rao Jadhav, a member of the Hindu Jagaran Vedike who was arrested in September this year for sending threat letters to dozens of Kannada writers and progressive thinkers, was identified as a potential recruit for a right-wing organised crime syndicate involved in the 2017 killing of journalist Gauri Lankesh in Bengaluru, police investigations have revealed.
Jadhav’s name and an old phone number figured among a list of people identified by Sujit Kumar alias Praveen alias Manjunath, the thirteenth accused in the Gauri Lankesh murder case, as possible recruits for extremist activities, police sources said.
Jadhav, 41, a school dropout from Davangere in central Karnataka, was arrested by the Bengaluru Central Crime Branch police for sending threatening letters to writers B T Lalitha Naik, Kum Veerabhadrappa, B L Venu, Banjagere Jayaprakash, Vasundhara Bhoopathi and others, over a two-year period. He was arrested following an anomaly in the pattern of posting the letters.
Kumar, who is also from Davangere, has been accused of being a recruiter for a right-wing extremist outfit linked to the murders of Lankesh (September 5, 2017) and progressive thinkers Narendra Dabholkar (2013) and Govind Pansare and M M Kalburgi (2015). He was arrested in 2018 in connection with the Lankesh murder.
This story was originally published in indianexpress.com. Read the full story here .
