One of the daughters of Kannada scholar M M Kalburgi, who was 77 when shot dead at the door of his house in Dharwad on August 30, 2015, identified the killers of her father during an emotional deposition in a Dharwad court on March 17.
Kalburgi’s daughter Roopadarshi K, 49, broke down in the court after identifying a man, Ganesh Miskin, now 29, as the one who shot her father. She also identified Praveen Chatur, now 29, as the man who was waiting for Ganesh on a motorcycle near the house.
Ganesh — linked to a right-wing extremist Hindutva outfit created by radical members of groups like the Sanatan Sanstha and its affiliate the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti — is incidentally also accused of riding the killer of journalist Gauri Lankesh, 55, in Bengaluru on September 5, 2017. Chatur is also associated with a fringe right-wing group and is accused in cases of violence during the screening of film Padmavat in 2018.
Miskin and Chatur were arrested by a Special Investigation Team of the Karnataka Police that was initially constituted to probe the murder of journalist Gauri Lankesh in 2017. The probe in the Lankesh murder revealed that the case was closely linked to the Kalburgi murder and those of two progressive thinkers in Maharashtra — Narendra Dabholkar, 69, in August 2013, and Govind Pansare, 81, in February 2015.
In her deposition to the court, Roopadarshi said she was at her father’s house at the time of his murder. Around 8.45 am her father was on the phone when there was a knock on the door, she told the court. Her mother Umadevi went to the door and found a stranger who said he wanted to meet “Sir”, and when her father reached the door, she heard the sound of a gunshot, the court was told. Roopadarshi said her father had collapsed and she saw a man jumping on to a motorcycle with a rider waiting outside.
The family rushed Kalburgi to a nearby hospital, and later to a government hospital, where he was pronounced dead, Kalburgi’s daughter stated in her deposition.
“The witness, after identifying the accused, turned emotional and cried. This was brought to the notice of the court by the Special Public Prosecutor,” the trial court noted in the recordings of the deposition.
The cross-examination of Kalburgi’s daughter by the defence and the deposition of Kalburgi’s wife Umadevi was adjourned to the next date of the hearing. Kalburgi’s wife Umadevi, earlier in 2019, identified the killer of her husband and his accomplice in an official identification parade which is part of the evidence in the case.
The SIT probe in Karnataka revealed that Lankesh, 55, and scholar Kalburgi were killed with the same gun that was used to kill Leftist thinker Govind Pansare, 81, in Kolhapur, in Maharashtra in February 2015, while a second gun used in the Pansare shooting was used to gun down rationalist Narendra Dabholkar, 69, in Pune in August 2013. In all, five persons who have been charged for the Lankesh murder, including Ganesh Miskin, are also accused in the Kalburgi murder case.
This article first appeared on indianexpress.com