A retired forensic expert who is a key prosecution witness in the 2015 murder case of Kannada scholar M M Kalburgi has deposed about his ballistic analysis findings that link the killing to two murders in Maharashtra: that of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar in 2013, and leftist thinker Govind Pansare in 2015.
Kalburgi, 77, was murdered in Dharwad, Karnataka, while Dabholkar, 69, was killed in Pune in August 2013, and Pansare, 81, in Kolhapur in February 2015.
It was the findings of ballistics expert B C Ravindra from the Karnataka Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) in 2015 that provided concrete evidence to link the three murders to a single group. His findings also became the basis for ballistic analysis of bullets and cartridges used in the 2017 killing of journalist Gauri Lankesh, which revealed that the four murders were executed with the same pair of 7.65 mm country-made guns, allegedly by a right-wing Hindutva crime syndicate targeting individuals in hate crimes.
Ravindra, who took the witness box on December 24, 2025, during the ongoing trial in the Kalburgi murder case at a sessions court in Dharwad, identified reports that he had submitted in 2015 after comparing the cartridges and bullets recovered from the Kalburgi murder with those from the Dabholkar and Pansare murders.
Defence advocates attempted to prevent him from deposing by claiming that his findings were not relevant to the Kalburgi murder case. The special public prosecutor, however, insisted that the findings from the cases in Pune and Kolhapur were relevant to the Dharwad case as they linked the three murders together.
Ravindra’s reports indicated that two guns were used in the February 16, 2015, murder of Pansare and that one of the two guns was used previously for the Dabholkar murder on August 20, 2013, while a second gun from the Pansare shooting was used to kill Kalburgi in August 2015.
Ravindra deposed in court that he first received a batch of items at the FSL on September 4, 2015, from the Kalburgi murder, which occurred on the doorstep of the scholar’s house in Dharwad on the morning of August 30, 2015. The items included empty cartridges for two bullets fired at the scholar from close range and two recovered bullets.
In an initial report of September 28, 2015, the ballistic expert said he identified the two recovered bullets (Article 2 and 3) and cartridges (articles 6 and 7) as having “been fired through a single country made pistol chambered for 7.65 mm caliber pistol”.
Ravindra deposed that, subsequently, he was asked by the investigating officer of the Kalburgi murder case to carry out a comparison of the ballistic evidence in the Dharwad murder with evidence from a case registered in February 2015 by the Rajarampuri police in Kolhapur for the Pansare murder. The ballistic evidence was reportedly received on October 5, 2015, and examined.
According to Ravindra’s deposition, he provided a report to the police stating that the cartridge cases marked as exhibits 2, 4 and 5, and a bullet marked as exhibit 20 from the Rajarampuri case (Pansare murder) were fired from the same 7.65 mm gun as the bullets marked as article 2 and 3, and the cartridges marked as articles 6 and 7 in the Kalburgi murder.
Two other cartridges marked as exhibits 1 and 3 in the shooting of Pansare (and his wife) in Kolhapur “have been fired through another single country made pistol chambered for 7.65 mm caliber pistol”, his report stated.
Ravindra told the court that following these findings, he was asked by the CID’s investigating officer to also compare the ballistic evidence from a murder case registered at the Deccan police station in Pune for the August 20, 2013, murder of Dabholkar with the evidence from the Kalburgi and Pansare cases. The Dabholkar case evidence was reportedly received on October 31, 2015, at the FSL.
The second set of ballistic analysis revealed that the bullets and cartridges from the Dabholkar murder did not match those from the Kalburgi murder, but the unmatched cartridges from the Pansare murder were linked to a gun used for the Dabholkar murder.
The cartridge cases in “Exhibits 3 and 4 of Deccan PS, Pune City” and the cartridge cases in “Exhibits No. 1 and 3 of Rajampuri PS have been fired through another single country made pistol chambered for 7.65 mm caliber pistol cartridges,” the ballistic expert confirmed in court.
Ravindra’s evidence in the Kalburgi murder trial comes on the back of four separate eyewitnesses, including family members of the scholar, identifying Ganesh Miskin, a member of a right-wing outfit in Hubbali, as the man who shot down Kalburgi. Apart from Miskin, witnesses have identified Praveen Chatur, the motorcycle rider, and Amol Kale, the group leader who conducted a recce, as being directly involved in the Kalburgi murder.
Miskin and Kale are also accused in the Gauri Lankesh shooting case.
Kale, a former convenor of the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti, was allegedly a key leader of a right-wing extremist group that was assembled by recruiting youths with extremist mindsets from outfits like the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti, Sanatan Sanstha, Sri Rama Sene and Shri Shivpratishthan Hindustan.
The extremist group—identified as an organised crime syndicate by the Karnataka Police—is alleged to have been involved in the four targeted assassinations of progressive thinkers between 2013 and 2017 in Maharashtra and Karnataka, apart from carrying out petrol bomb attacks on theatres during the screening of Padmavat in Karnataka in 2018.
In March 2019, a Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Karnataka Police, which investigated the Gauri Lankesh murder, was handed the investigation of the Kalburgi murder on a plea filed in the Supreme Court by the scholar’s wife, Umadevi Kalburgi. She stated that investigations in the Gauri Lankesh case had shown that her husband was killed with the same gun that was used to kill the journalist.
The SIT probe revealed through ballistic analysis at the Karnataka FSL that Lankesh and Kalburgi were killed with the same gun, and that the gun was used to kill Pansare. The probe in the Kalburgi case had previously revealed in 2015 that a second gun used in the Pansare shooting was used to gun down Dabholkar.
In August 2019, the SIT identified Miskin and Chatur as the perpetrators of the Kalburgi murder and Kale, Vasudev Suryavanshi, Sharad Kalaskar, the alleged shooter in the Dabholkar murder, and Amit Badd, a Hubli associate of Miskin, as the key conspirators for the Kalburgi murder.
The SIT has stated that Kalburgi was targeted for statements wrongly attributed to him following a seminar against superstitious practices held in 2014.
Lankesh and Kalburgi were murdered by a group whose members acted according to principles outlined in a book called Kshatra Dharma Sadhana published by Sanatan Sanstha, the Karnataka SIT said in a chargesheet against 18 accused in the Lankesh case.
“The members of this organisation targeted persons who they identified to be inimical to their belief and ideology. The members strictly followed the guidelines and principles mentioned in ‘Kshatra Dharma Sadhana’, a book published by Sanatan Sanstha,” the SIT said.
The members were “indoctrinated and actively underwent arms training, shooting practice and were trained in the manufacture and use of bombs with the intention of promoting insurgency and creating fear in society,” the SIT said.
All the accused in the Kalburgi and Lankesh murder cases have been granted bail. Kalaskar, who is convicted in the 2013 Dabholkar murder case in Pune, remains in prison.
Curated by James Chen
