Kalburgi case: Supreme Court seeks govt reply on probe by SIT

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday issued a notice to the Centre and Karnataka government for a probe by a special investigation team into the killing of noted scholar M.M. Kalburgi in Dharwad, Karnataka, in August 2013.

A bench of Chief Justi-ce Dipak Misra and Justi-ces A.M. Kanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud also is-sued a notice to the natio-nal investigation team on the petition filed by Umadevi Kalburgi, who alleged that the investigation conducted so far into her husband’s killing was in a sorry state. A CID investigation is being conducted in the case.

She sought an investigation by a special team of the Karnataka police, under the supervision of a retired Supreme Court or high court judge. She said that since the three murders — of her husba-nd and activists in Mahar-ashtra, Govind Pansare and Narendra Dabholkar — were inter-connected, a direction should be issued to Maharashtra, Karn-ataka, Goa, the CBI and the NIA to conduct a coordinated probe into Kalburgi’s murder.

She pointed out that the present probe for the last three years had not yielded any result despite assurances from the state that the “biggest manhunt” by the state CID was underway. She alleg-ed that the same organisation and the very same shooters behind the murders of activists Govind Pansare on February 16, 2015, in Kolhapur and Narendra Dabholkar on August 20, 2013, in Pune were behind her husband’s murder.

“All the three were abused, threatened by certain sections of society,” she said. She said the same shooters might be involved in the Goa bomb blasts of 2009 and may have already fled the country. She feared that the probe into her husband’s murder would “casually drift towards its conclusion with the possibility of the offenders going unpunished”.

“Every offence is a crime against society...  yet there are some species of ghastly, revolting and villainous violations of the invaluable right to life which leaves all sensible and right-minded persons of the society shell-shocked and traumatised,” she said.