The special investigation team probing the September 2017 murder of journalist Gauri Lankesh has named 18 people in its second chargesheet, including the prime accused, while seeking more time to round up the remaining suspects.

Sources said the main suspect, Amol Kale, 32, was associated with the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti, an outfit linked to the right-wing Sanatan Sanstha.

All the other suspects too are said to have links with right-wing organisations. Two of the 18 accused are still at large.

The SIT filed the 9,235-page chargesheet on Friday evening before the principal sessions court, which handles cases booked under the Karnataka Control of Organised Crime Act (KCOCA), 2000.

An SIT source said there would be at least one more chargesheet since investigations were not over yet.

Gauri, a vocal critic of right-wing politics, was shot moments after she had entered her residential compound in Bangalore’s Rajarajeshwari Nagar on September 5 last year.

The alleged shooter, Parashuram Waghmare, wore a full-face helmet as he stepped off a motorbike and fired four shots at the journalist.

The SIT has based the chargesheet on digital evidence, gait analysis (study of human motion) of those named and digital reconstruction of images from security camera footage sourced from several locations.

Waghmare, an activist of the Sri Ram Sene, a right-wing group well known in Karnataka, was arrested in June this year.

The chargesheet was filed on Friday primarily because the SIT had arrested suspects Kale, Manohar Edave, Amit Degwekar and Sujit Kumar on May 31 under the KCOCA and the chargesheet had to be filed within 180 days under the law.

Since then the other accused have also been slapped with KCOCA charges for organised crime that could at least send them to life in jail.

The SIT has still not found the weapon that was used to kill Gauri, although ballistic tests on shells found from the crime spot has established that the assailants had used a 7.65mm country-made gun.

The first chargesheet filed on May 30 had named K.T. Naveen Kumar and Sujith Kumar alias Praveen as the first and second accused.

The 650-page chargesheet had confessions from both and findings of the Forensic Science Laboratory that analysed the shells fired at Gauri.

It was Sujith Kumar’s arrest early this year that changed the trajectory of the probe. The suspected gunrunner, a native of Karnataka’s Mandya district, had also been accused of conspiring to kill Kannada writer and well-known rationalist K.S. Bhagawan.