A civil society group staged a protest against the state home department in Dharwad, Bengaluru and Chikmagalur on Tuesday alleging it had turned a blind eye to activist-journalist Gauri Lankesh’s murder suspects being felicitated by some organisations in Vijayapura, after the latter were released on bail.
Gauri Lankesh (55), who ran the weekly 'Gauri Lankesh Patrike' a Kannada tabloid, was gunned down by bike-borne assailants on September 5, 2017 outside her Bengaluru residence.
After a video of the two accused being given a rousing welcome by right-wing activists amid chants of 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' and 'Sanatana Dharma Ki Jai' went viral on social media last week, Leftist groups and civil rights groups staged protests against "public display" of support to the “criminals”.
Six years after their arrest, the special court for organised crime related cases granted bail to Waghmore (A2), Edave (A14) and Rajesh Bangera (A8) on October 9, against a surety bond. Subsequently, they were also allowed to visit their native place. When the accused, who landed in Vijayapura, offered prayers at a Kalika temple and paid tribute to a statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji, they were welcomed by right-wing groups with garlands.
“We had witnessed rapists and murderers being felicitated in states like Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh and had opposed it. But today, we are shocked to see killers of Gauri Lankesh being honoured in Karnataka as it goes against the ethos of this state, which has always stood for human values. We consider it as a blot on the state’s reputation. We urge the home minister to book the organisers of the felicitation for murder instigation. We also demand action against communal organisations instigating violence and so expedite the Gauri’s murder trial to punish the guilty at the earliest,” said the memorandum submitted to the home minister by ‘Eddelu Karnataka’ - a civil society collective that had campaigned against the Bharathiya Janata Party in the 2023 Assembly polls and also the parliament elections this year.
READ: The Gauri Lankesh I knew
It may be recalled that the Special Investigation Team (SIT) constituted to probe the murder, had arrested 17 people linked to a radical Hindutva group ‘Sanatan Sanstha’ and other allied outfits for the murder, in 2018. The SIT filed the first chargesheet on May 30, 2018, and mentioned that K.T. Naveen Kumar (38) alias Hotte Manja, a Hindu activist from Maddur (Mandya district), along with another suspect Sujith Kumar alias Praveen (37), is believed to have supplied fire arms to the man who shot the activist. Gauri died after four bullets were pumped into her body with a 7.65 mm country made pistol.
The first chargesheet was followed by an additional submission on November 23, 2018, by the SIT before the Principal Civil and Sessions court, where 18 accused were named. The SIT identified one Amol Khale as the mastermind, Parashuram Waghmare as the shooter and others like Amit Degwekar and Sujith Kumar as responsible for arming and training the assailants along with their indoctrination.
READ: The blood of Gauri Lankesh
The chargesheet stated that the Hindu extremist organisation, Sanatan Sanstha, was responsible for the murder of Gauri Lankesh and added that her murder was linked to the murders of other left-leaning activists and rationalists Professor M.M. Kalburgi, Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare. Gauri Lankesh was targeted for opposing Hindutva vehemently in her writing and speeches. In August 2019, the Centre awarded the Home Minister's Medal for Excellence to the SIT for its investigation into Gauri Lankesh's murder.
The killing had set off massive protests across the country, as Left-wing activists and Gauri's friends alleged there was a “pattern” in these killings, much similar to the killings of rationalists and activists like Kalburgi, Pansare and Dabholkar. They dubbed it as the “death of democracy and right to dissent” and blamed right-wing outfits for the murders.