Gauri killing: No headway after questioning over 100 people; SIT now grills Kunigal Giri

Bengaluru, Sept 15: Further intensifying the probe into the murder of journalist-activist Gauri Lankesh, the Special Investigation Team (SIT) has commenced interrogation of rowdy sheeter Kunigal Giri and six of his associates, currently in judicial custody, to see if they have information on key arms smugglers in the city.

More than 100 persons from across the State have been questioned by the police but there has been no breakthrough.

The probe team is aggressively working on identifying all individuals in the city and state who are in possession with country-made pistols chambered with a 7.65 mm bore.

The team has listed out people who are involved in illegal arms trade and will question them to ascertain how many such pistols have been sold and are in use illegally in the city and its outskirts.

Kunigal Giri (35), a native of Kunigal, has several aliases such as Girish, Modur Giri, Ashwath and Prashanth Raja. He is involved in nearly 70 cases in Bengaluru, including 30 cases of dacoities and robberies, and in most of his heists, he brandished pistols and threatened his victims.

He is also involved in numerous such cases in Mangaluru, Belagavi, Hassan, Tumakuru, Ballari and Bengaluru Rural. The CCB police had earlier arrested Giri in 2008 after booking him in 40 cases of dacoities and robberies.

A police team has also gone to Vijayapura jail to question an illegal arms dealer who had reportedly sold over two dozen pistols in Bengaluru after procuring it from his source in Bihar.

The police, over a period of time, had recovered 15 pistols out of the 26 accounted for according to the dealer’s claims, but the police could not trace 11 pistols.

One of the traced pistols was used in APMC president Kadabagere Srinivas’ shooting a few months ago in Yelahanka, the police said. The police said Gauri’s assailants could have procured the pistol from these rowdies.

A majority of rowdies, including those in the underworld, use 7.65 mm pistols in the state as ammunition is available easily in the market. Police records state that history-sheeters like Ravi Pujari, Hebbet Manja and their associates have been using these pistols for a long time. Central Crime Branch police have seized 10 such guns from Hebbet Manja and his associates.

Progress so far

SIT has learnt there are no professional shooters lodged in any of the jails in the state.

Data of around 10 lakh phone lines that were active, hours before Gauri’s murder, have been collected by SIT from mobile towers of Basavanagudi and Rajarajeshwari Nagar.

SIT has learnt calls were even made to Maharashtra, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.

Around 32 local residents have spoken over phone to people out of the state.

Of these, two were professors and the rest were all private company employees.

The SIT team also visited lodges in the city to collect names of the visitors who booked rooms before September 5 and vacated them on that day.

A mobile phone was recovered from near Gauri’s house which has been handed over to the FSL who are yet to examine it.

Scotland Yard officials join probe

Meanwhile, two senior officials from Scotland Yard have come to help the Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing Gauri Lankesh’s murder on Wednesday.

The two, said to be experts in technical investigation, have been apprised of all information, developments and investigation progress till date, regarding the case.

The CID had sought the help of Scotland Yard in Prof Kalburgi’s murder case as well, and presume they would be of help in this case too, a senior police officer said.