Deaths of Journalists in India: Gauri Lankesh Murder Case

In 2017 well known activist and journalist Gauri Lankesh was killed in front of her house when she was returning from her office on 5th of September, Lankesh was the editor of her own magazine Lankesh Patrike, which is a weekly magazine. On the evening of 5 September when she was returning from office, two gunmen on a motorbike came and shot 7 shots on her, out of 7 Lankesh got wounds with 3 gun shots two on chest and one on head and after that she was dead. After her death Bengaluru police came a investigate the whole scene and after her death there was a uncommon rage in every city every other press club or social group were doing candle march on the roads and the protest was started. On the every social media sites the outrage was visible some of them were sad on the death of a well know journalist and others were criticizing her death, that yes she got what she deserved. In this social war some twitter handlers started abusing the Gauri Lankesh and the fact is that these twitteratis were followed by our Prime Minister Modi on twitter and when this thing came out the war become more serious now.

After the death of Lankesh now the family was surrounded by the media, and the questions were asked in a political tone then Indrajit Lankesh the brother of Gauri said that please don’t give this a political color, we only want justice now we don’t know that who killed Gauri and by whom she was killed, and they can be the right-wing extremists and the naxalites because she was trying to rehabilitate them and there was no personal enmity of Gauri, the only thing with which she stands out her whole life was her ideology, and he also request to the media that please don’t add any political name in this case. He said we only want justice now if they get this from local police, the SIT or from court the justice was their main concern.

For this case a 21 member Special Investigation Team (SIT) was formed to look into this. The SIT releases the sketches of murders on the basis of the CCTV camera footage on 12 October 2017, and arrested a guy named Naveen Kumar on 3rd march 2018 and this guy Naveen Kumar is a founder of an organization named as ‘Hindu Yuva Sena’ and he is influenced by the right-wing extremist ideology, in his 12 page long statement Naveen said that Gauri was murdered because of her anti-Hindu views, and this make Naveen’s followers angry.

Gauri Lankesh’s magazine Lankesh Patrike mostly attack on the right-wing or Hindu cultural ideology, and may be because of this thing, her magazine doesn’t get any advertisement.

But till today Gauri Lankesh murder case is still pending and there is no judgment on this case neither from SIT nor from any governmental body.