New Delhi: A plea filed by the wife of murdered scholar and rationalist MM Kalburgi, seeking a probe by a special investigation team into his killing, will be heard by the Supreme Court today.

In the last hearing on January 25, the top court had said it would not adjourn the case.

"It's a very serious case and we will hear it We are not going to adjourn the case," a top court bench headed by Justice Rohinton Nariman had said.In the earlier hearing, the Supreme Court told the Central Bureau of Investigation to find out whether there was a "common thread" in the murders of social activists Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare, journalist Gauri Lankesh and Mr Kalburgi so that one agency can investigate all the four cases.Mr Kalburgi was killed in Karnataka's Dharwad in 2015.

Mr Pansare was also killed the same year, and Ms Lankesh was killed in September 2017 in Bengaluru.

Mr Dabholkar was assassinated in August 2013.Mr Kalburgi was honoured with the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2006.Mr Kalburgi's wife Umadevi had approached the Supreme Court for an independent probe coordinating with the investigations into the three other murder cases.Umadevi alleged that shooters from the same organisation were allegedly involved in all the three murders.In a previous hearing, the Supreme Court had pulled up the Karnataka government for "fooling around" instead of investigating Mr Kalburgi's murder.Last year, investigators had said Gauri Lankesh and MM Kalburgi were shot dead with the same gun and the Karnataka forensic science laboratory had confirmed it, according to news agency PTI.

It was the first official confirmation of the link between the two killings, which happened after a gap of two years of each other.The bullets in both cases "have been fired through a single country made pistol chambered for 7.65 mm caliber pistol cartridges," a source had told PTI quoting the forensic report.