Bengaluru: The Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the sensational murder of journalist-activist Gauri Lankesh will produce the alleged shooter Parshuram Waghmare before the court on Monday.
SIT officials said that Waghmare, who was arrested on June 11 from Sindagi in Vijaypura taluk, was sent on 14-day police custody by the Third ACMM Court on June 12. “The police custody is ending on Monday. We will seek an extension,” an SIT official said.
The probe team will also seek the permission of the court to take four other accused Amit Degveker, Amol Kale, Sujeet and Manohar – for narco-analysis and lie-detector tests at the Forensic Sciences Laboratory at Gandhinagar in Gujrat.
Asked whether Waghmare will also undergo the tests, an official told Deccan Chronicle, “Parshuram has been cooperating with us since his arrest. We have been able to solve a major part of the sensational crime because of his confession. The team does not have plans to take him for the tests.”
The SIT had a setback in April when K.T. Naveen Kumar or Hotte Manja, who was an alleged gunrunner and the first to be arrested in the case, had refused to undergo a narco-analysis test.
Naveen had agreed to undergo the test before a magistrate in Bengaluru and the SIT had taken him to Ahmedabad on April 16. But after reaching Gujarat, he reportedly alleged that he was forced into the test by the SIT.
A senior SIT officer said that within the core team, a few members have been assigned to trace the weapon used to kill Gauri and the motorcycle used for the crime.
Meanwhile, sketches of the three men who contacted Waghmare in person have been made and circulated all over the state.
During the probe, it was revealed that the same gun that was used to kill Kannada scholar Dr M.M. Kalburgi, 77, and Leftist thinker Govind Pansare, 81, in 2015 was used to kill Gauri. But Waghmare was not involved in those murders, officials said.
