Mangaluru: Officers from Special Investigation Team (SIT) have visited Dakshina Kannada district thrice as part of their investigation into brutal murder of senior Journalist Gauri Lankesh. SIT has visited Kadaba police station thrice to gather information on one of the suspects behind the Gauri Lankesh murder case.

The police suspect one of the suspects in Malegaon Blast case, Noojibalthila village native Jayaprakash Yane Anna may have involved in Gauri Lankesh murder. Jayaprakash is a native of Noojibalthila located near Kadaba in Puttur taluk. The suspect, Jayaprakash Yane Anna is absconding soon after Malegaon blast and a police team had visited Kadaba as part of its enquiry into Malegaon blast.

SIT suspects that, a five member gang including Kolhapur based Praveen Limkar (34), Jayaprakash Yane Anna (45), Pune native, Sarang Akolkar (38), Rudra Patil from Sangli, and Vinay Pawar of Satara might have worked behind Malegaon blast in 2009 and the same group may have involved in the brutal murder of Gauri Lankesh.

Earlier, an investigation by Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had revealed that, the trio, Rudra Patil, Sarang Akolkar and Vinay Pawar worked behind the murder of progressive thinker Narendra Dabholkar in 2013 at Kolhapur of Maharashtra. Two separate special investigation teams from Maharashtra and Karnataka had also stated that the same three persons may have involved in two more murder cases, killing of Dharwad based Kannada writer MM Kalburgi and another Maharashtra based activist Govind Pansare.