Order to tail Gauri issued in Belagavi

BENGALURU: A 37-year-old Pune man and his accomplice ordered a 29-year-old Vijayapura man to tail journalist-activist Gauri Lankesh and track her movements for three months before she was gunned down in front of her house in Bengaluru, according to a remand application filed in a Bengaluru court.
Amol Kale from Pune and Manohar Dundappa Yadave from Vijayapura are in the custody of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing her murder.
Kale and his accomplice Dada alias Nihal met Manohar at a hotel in Belagavi in June 2017 and issued the orders that she was, in their view, denigrating Hindu culture, according to the application. TOI has a copy of the application. Dada is absconding. The SIT submitted the remand application to the court on Thursday.
SIT officials have recovered a diary from Kale.
‘Kale readied blueprint for heinous job’
The SIT said it seized from Kale a piece of paper which had names of eight people, including that of Gauri Lankesh. “In his own handwriting, Kale has written down the eight names. The second name was Gauri’s. Kale has not provided a satisfactory answer as to why he had written down the names, especially that of Gauri,” read the application.
“A diary recovered from Yadave contained sketches of the roads near Gauri’s residence. The manner in which the sketch is prepared tells that the accused had readied a blueprint for a heinous job. Yadave has scribbled words like helmet, bulb (apparently a reference to CCTV camera), approach road and exit road,” the SIT said.
“The notings in the diary match the description of the meeting in a Belagavi hotel in June 2017,” the SIT said.