The court of the principal city civil and sessions judge in Bengaluru has drawn up a plan to conduct the trial into the murder of the journalist Gauri Lankesh from July 4, with hearings to be held every second week of a month. To commence the trial, the sessions court had summoned the first witness—Kavitha Lankesh, younger sister of the slain journalist—but did not record her statement on Friday on account of some of the accused jailed in Maharashtra not being present in the court. The special investigation team has named 17 persons from Hindutva fringe outfits for the murder conspiracy and the killing of the 55-year-old editor of the Kannada publication Lankesh Patrike on her doorstep on the night of September 5, 2017. On Thursday, a new judge at the sessions court overruled a demand by the defence counsel to conduct the trial with the physical presence of all the accused, and ordered their presence via videoconferencing. While eleven of the accused were produced in the court on Thursday through videoconferencing, six accused lodged at Mumbai’s Arthur Road Jail were not. Defence counsel sought the physical presence of all the accused. “On hearing both the sides, the request by the defence to physically make these accused to be present during the trial is not feasible as their presence by videoconferencing may be secured. Virtual presence having been accepted as the mode of presence before the court, the said prayer is rejected,” the trial court ruled on Friday. “The jail authorities at Bengaluru and Arthur Road Jail are directed to ensure the virtual presence of the accused during the trial,” the court added. The sessions court also turned down a plea by special public prosecutor S Balan to start the trial with the recording of the first witness’s statement arguing that she would not identify any of the accused. “The presence of the accused during trial being the basic tenet of any trial, such a prayer in the absence of consent by the defence is not sustainable,” the court said. The court indicated that both sides had agreed for the trial to be held on a continuous basis for a week in a month. It has fixed the first session of the trial to be between July 4 and July 8, before posting the case for a “further case-management hearing if any” on June 4. The decks were cleared for the trial in October 2021 when charges of murder, organised crime and gun crimes were framed against 17 members of an extremist right-wing syndicate by the principal sessions court. The framing of charges had been delayed for over two years on account of the Covid pandemic and multiple applications filed by the accused. Charges have been framed under Indian Penal Code Section 302 (murder), Section 120B (criminal conspiracy) and others related to crimes carried out with criminal knowledge and intention, as well as under the Karnataka Organised Crime Act and the Arms Act. Lankesh, an outspoken critic of Hindutva, was shot dead outside her west Bengaluru home by two assassins on a motorcycle. The arrested accused, who were allegedly trained by a secretive right-wing group in using guns and explosives, are alleged to have targeted the journalist for being “anti-Hindu”. They have pleaded not guilty. The accused had allegedly created a syndicate to carry out killings and attacks—primarily in Karnataka and Maharashtra—between 2013 and 2018. “The members of this organisation targeted persons who they identified to be inimical to their belief and ideology. The members strictly followed the guidelines and principles mentioned in Kshatra Dharma Sadhana, a book published by Sanatan Sanstha,” the police said after filing an additional 9,235-page chargesheet on November 23, 2018. A preliminary chargesheet was filed earlier. Buy Now | Our best subscription plan now has a special price Early in its investigation, the police found that the 7.65 mm country-made pistol used to gun down the journalist was the allegedly same gun that was used to kill Kannada scholar MM Kalburgi, 77, at his home in Dharwad on August 30, 2015. The same gun was also found to have allegedly been used to shoot Leftist thinker Govind Pansare, 81, in Kolhapur, Maharashtra, on February 16, 2015 (he died on February 20, 2015), while a second gun used in the Pansare shooting was found to match with a gun allegedly used to shoot Maharashtra rationalist Narendra Dabholkar, 69, in Pune on August 20, 2013. The investigation in the Lankesh murder case revealed the existence of a network of Hindutva extremists in the country. Several of the accused in the case allegedly received arms and explosives training from people identified only by fake names and suspected of links to terrorist acts in the 2006-2008 period. The arrested accused are Amol Kale, 37; Parashuram Waghmore, 27; Ganesh Miskin, 27; Amith Baddi, 27; Amith Degvekar, 38; Bharath Kurane, 37; Suresh HL, 36; Rajesh Bangera, 50; Sudhanva Gondalekar, 39; Sharad Kalaskar, 25; Mohan Nayak, 50; Vasudev Suryavanshi, 29; Sujith Kumar, 37; Manohara Edave, 29; Srikanth Pangarkar, 40; KT Naveen Kumar, 37; and Rushikesh Deodikar, 44.
