The younger sister of slain journalist Gauri Lankesh is set to challenge a Karnataka High Court order granting bail to an accused in the murder case on Thursday.
“I will soon file an appeal before the Supreme Court,” Kavita Lankesh told The Telegraph on Monday, adding that her lawyer was in the process of filing the appeal before the apex court.
Mohan Nayak N is the only one among the 18 people arrested in the case to receive bail.
Gauri, a firebrand journalist and trenchant critic of the Hindutva ideology, was shot dead by two men on September 5, 2017, outside her home in Bangalore’s Rajarajeshwari Nagar locality.
The special investigation team (SIT) of Karnataka police that probed the case has alleged that many of the accused are members or sympathisers of the Goa-based hard-line Hindutva outfit, Sanathan Sanstha.
Nayak is accused of sheltering the two alleged shooters at a rented accommodation in Ramanagara, some 40km from Bangalore.
The accused, who have spent about five years in judicial custody, have all been booked under non-bailable penal sections such as murder, apart from the Arms Act and the Karnataka Control of Organised Crime Act.
In his bail plea before the high court, Nayak had argued that the trial was getting delayed and underlined that only 90 of the 527 witnesses had been examined by the special court.
The special public prosecutor had opposed bail, arguing that there “is no change in the circumstances or in law, and therefore the petitioner cannot argue the case on merits afresh”.
Justice S. Vishwajith Shetty noted in his order that none of the 22 witnesses who had spoken about Nayak’s alleged role had said he was part of the meeting where the accused allegedly conspired to kill the journalist.
The court ordered the release of Nayak subject to certain conditions, including a personal bond of Rs 1 lakh and two sureties of a like sum.
Kavita is hoping for a speedy trial since chief minister Siddaramaiah has ordered that a fast-track court be set up to try the murder cases of Gauri and scholar-rationalist M.M. Kalburgi.
Kalburgi was shot dead on August 30, 2015, at his home in Dharwad, some 430km from here. The police have found leads linking the two cases.
The chief minister’s decision came in response to a letter from Kavita seeking a speedy trial of the Gauri murder case. “I am hopeful that the trial in my sister’s case would be over in about a year,” Kavita told this newspaper.
Two other rationalists who had angered hardliners too were murdered, in Maharashtra, roughly around the same time as Gauri and Kalburgi.
Anti-superstition activist Narendra Dabholkar was shot dead during his morning walk in Pune on August 20, 2013, and CPI leader Govind Pansare was shot in Kolhapur on February 16, 2015, and died four days later on February 20.
The Karnataka SIT later claimed to have unearthed a plot by Hindu extremists to kill rationalist author K.S. Bhagawan, who now lives under armed police protection in Mysore.
