The Smoking Gun

A country-made pistol could help solve four murder cases against people associated with the Sanatan Sanstha

- Prathima Nandakumar And Dnyanesh Jathar

THE MURDERS of Narendra Dabholkar and Gauri Lankesh took place four years and 800 kilometres apart. Dabholkar, a renowned rationalist and medical doctor, was killed in broad daylight, near a temple in Pune on August 20, 2013. Lankesh, an activist and editor, was gunned down at night, outside her home in Bengaluru on September 5 last year. In both the cases, the assailants used country-made pistols and escaped on two-wheelers.

The CBI is inquiring into the Dabholkar murder, while a special investigation team of the Karnataka Police has come close to cracking the Lankesh case. A potentially clinching evidence of the link between the two cases, however, was unearthed by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad. On August 11, the ATS began a series of arrests and raids across Maharashtra that not only blew the lid offa terror plot, but also unearthed a huge arms cache. Part of the cache, investigators say, was a 7.65mm country-made pistol that could have been used to kill both Dabholkar and Lankesh.

Investigations into the two murders have long been converging. The SIT has arrested 12 persons and charged them under the Karnataka Control of Organised Crimes Act, describing them as “highly indoctrinated and trained” criminals. One of the accused—K.T. Naveen Kumar alias Hotte Manja, a hindutva activist from Mandya who allegedly supplied firearms to the assassins—told investigators that Lankesh was killed for her “anti-Hindu” views and “criticism of Hindu gods”.