Kalburgi murder case: Two prime accused have absconded, cannot be traced, SIT tells SC

Two of the main accused in the murder of rationalist M M Kalburgi have absconded and cannot be traced, a Special Investigation Team (SIT) has told the Supreme Court on Friday in its status report.

Kalburgi, a former vice-chancellor of Hampi University and well-known epigraphist, was shot dead at his residence in Kalyan Nagar in Dharwad, Karnataka, on August 30, 2015.

Born in 1938, he was a Sahitya Akademi award-winning writer of old Kannada literature.

The SIT, in its status report filed before a bench of Justices R F Nariman and S Ravindra Bhat, said that investigation has been completed and charge sheet filed in the murder case.

"We have gone through the status report filed by the SIT. It says that two of the main accused have been absconding and cannot be traced. They also say that a charge sheet has been filed in the case and matter has been remitted to a Sessions Court for trial," the bench said.

As the Karnataka High Court is monitoring the case, nothing survives in the petition filed by Kalburgi's wife Umadevi and disposed of her plea, it said.

Umadevi moved the apex court in 2017 for a probe by a National Investigation Agency (NIA) or Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) claiming that no substantial probe has been carried out so far in the murder case by the state police.

She alleged that there was a common link between the murder of her husband and that of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar and social activist Govind Pansare, and hence the probe should be done by a Central agency.

On February 26 last year, the top court had transferred the probe into the killing of Kalburgi to the SIT, already investigating the murder case of journalist-activist Gauri Lankesh after Karnataka government said there were common links in the two cases.

The state's Crime Investigation Department was earlier probing Kalburgi's killing and a SIT was investigating the murder of Lankesh in September 2017, in Bengaluru.

The apex court had asked the Dharwad bench of the Karnataka High Court to monitor the SIT investigation into Kalburgi's killing.

It had said that if killings of Kalburgi, Lankesh,