The Karnataka High Court on Tuesday granted bail to three men accused in the 2017 murder of activist-journalist Gauri Lankesh, reported Bar and Bench.
Lankesh, the editor of a periodical named Gauri Lankesh Patrike and a prominent critic of Hindutva groups, was shot dead outside her home in Bengaluru’s Rajarajeshwari Nagar by a group of men on the night of September 5, 2017, as she was returning home from work.
The Karnataka government had opposed the bail pleas of the three accused persons: Amit Digvekar, KT Naveen Kumar and HL Suresh.
All three had applied for bail citing the example of Mohan Nayak, another man accused of Lankesh’s murder, who was granted bail by the High Court in December on the grounds of a delay in the completion of his trial.
Nayak, who had been in prison since July 2018, was initially denied bail by the court on two occasions.
However, the same bench later cited the “inordinate delay” in the trial’s completion and said that the charges against Nayak did not amount to either a life term or death sentence under the Karnataka Control of Organised Crime Act, 2000, under which he has been booked.
Lankesh’s sister, Kavita Lankesh, had moved the Supreme Court challenging Nayak’s bail.
The Karnataka government opposed the bail pleas of the three accused men citing an order of the High Court that had rejected similar applications by persons accused in the killing of scholar and activist MM Kalaburagi.
A Kendriya Sahitya Akademi awardee and anti-superstition activist, Kalaburagi was shot dead at his home in Karnataka’s Dharwad district on August 30, 2015.
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