india

Updated: Oct 28, 2015 18:29 IST

The investigation into the murder of rationalist scholar MM Kalburgi has taken a curious turn with the discovery of a bullet-ridden body that resembles the sketch of one of the suspected killers, a police officer said on condition of anonymity.

The Belgaum police stumbled upon the body of a man at a desolate spot in Khanapur Taluk of the district on October 18 and buried him a few days later after nobody turned up to collect the body.

On October 19, the police, as per procedure, released images of the dead man in an attempt to locate his family members. That is when a few local activists spotted a striking resemblance between the body’s face and the sketch of the alleged killer released by the police.

The source said the unidentified man was shot dead using a country-made pistol. He said the man was shot from a close range and there were no signs of struggle.

Although the Belgaum superintendent of police Ravikante Gowda dismissed the claims of resemblance as “without any basis”, a CID team from Bengaluru has reached Khanapur and investigating the latest murder for possible connections to the Kalburgi murder.

“There surely is resemblance but we don’t have anything concrete. We cannot move further until we find out the identity of the dead man… Based on the condition of the body, it seems there was no struggle involved. We suspect that the man was killed by people he knew very well,” a source in the Criminal Investigation Department said.