Bengaluru: Three sensational murders in Karnataka; two in Bengaluru and one in Dharwad between November 2014 and October 2016 have foxed the police. Sources in the three investigating agencies, which are handling the three murder cases, have told this newspaper on condition of anonymity that they have found no strong leads which can help them detect the murders.
Interestingly, all the three murders were alleged contract killings and executed by professional killers. There is no news on what happened to the investigation in the sensational murder of a highly decorated retired Air Force officer Parvez Khokhar, who was murdered on November 24, 2014 in his villa in a gated community in Hebbagodi police station limits.
Khokhar, a former Air Commodore, was a highly decorated officer and served as the project director of India’s indigenous Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) and was the military attache in the Indian mission in Islamabad for four years. Even after his retirement in 2003, Khokhar had taken up sensitive assignments.
It has been nearly two and half years after the 71-year-old retired officer was reportedly smothered to death on his bed, with his hands and limbs tied, the Bengaluru rural police have not been able to crack the case. They ruled out conspiracy theories and the other ‘routine’ suspect motives like property/relationships dispute and rivalry. On August 30, 2015 Prof. M.M. Kalburgi (77) – a rationalist and well known Kannada litterateur, was shot dead at his house by an assailant.
He had fired two bullets from a 7.65 mm country-made pistol. The killer and his accomplice on a motorcycle till date remain unidentified despite the “best” and “most concerted” efforts made by the State’s premier investigating agency – Criminal Investigation Department (CID).
The sensational murder gained Karnataka the notoriety of being an ‘intolerant’ State with the rationalists and voices of ‘dissent’ being perceived as soft targets. Prof Kalburgi’s murder was the last of the trilogy of fatal attacks against rationalist thinkers in India between August 2013 and August 2015. With his murder the anger against ‘organised’ attacks on rationalists gained national prominence.
Before Prof Kalburgi’s murder, Prof. Narendra Dabholkar (69) was shot dead in Pune on August 20, 2013 by two unknown assailants, who pumped in four bullets from a 7.65 mm country made pistol on him.
Later on February 16, 2015 CPI leader Govind Pansare (81) was fatally shot at in Kolhapur by two unknown bike borne assailants, who fired five bullets from two 7.65 mm country made pistols at him, when he was out on a morning walk with his wife.
The most recent murder of an Andhra Pradesh based industrialist Parachuri Surendra Kumar (55) in Bengaluru on October 30, 2016 again by two bike borne assailants, is also reportedly headed the Khokhar and Kalburgi way with the police claiming that it’s a ‘complex’ case with no leads so far.
“Surendra knew too many people and had reportedly collected ‘service’ charges from many of them on assurance of getting them huge loans. But he reportedly did not keep the promise. There was also a property angle and the police questioned his former assistant Kapil Shashwat, who was lodged in Mathura jail in UP on the alleged property dispute he had with Surendra. The investigation did not yield any conclusive result. Surendra was not in touch with his parents for long. In the last couple of years he had visited them in Andhra Pradesh, but they also couldn't help the investigating officer with any leads. The motive behind Surendra's murder remains unclear till date," said an officer on condition of anonymity.
No clarity on motive behind Khokhar and Surendra murders has the police chasing several theories and unknown assailants in the dark alley. In the case of Prof Kalburgi, while the motive was allegedly to silence his voice of reason, the killers here too remain unknown.
