Gauri Lankesh murder trial: Prosecution witness turns hostile, another identifies 3 key accused

A prosecution witness from the Udupi region of coastal Karnataka, who had earlier given a statement regarding going to Pune for arms training in June 2016 was treated as a hostile witness by the prosecution. The witness had earlier stated that he had gone to Pune at the instance of Praveen Kumar alias Sujit Kumar, a recruiter for the right-wing extremist outfit linked to the murder, and received training in using a gun.

The witness, who used to run a small shop in his hometown to sell ayurvedic products, denied the statements he made before a magistrate in August 2018 regarding his recruitment by Praveen and claimed that the statements were made under police pressure.

The Special Public Prosecutor cross-examined the witness after declaring him to be hostile. The witness denied being lectured on fundamentalist issues by a man identified as Veerendra during his alleged visit to Pune in 2016 along with a friend from Udupi who is also a witness in the case. He also denied having any association with the key accused in the case in Pune.

Apart from Praveen alias Sujit Kumar, the alleged recruiter for the right-wing extremist group, the witness had earlier reported meeting some of the other key accused in the Gauri Lankesh murder case during the 2016 training programme in Pune. The witness from Udupi is among the first to be declared hostile from a list of over 80 witnesses examined in the case since the trial began in July 2022.

According to Special Public Prosecutor S Balan, “One witness I have declared as hostile and have cross-examined him. The witness was part of the group. He was taken to Pune and was imparted training in the use of guns. He was ideologically motivated. He assured us that he would depose and his statement was recorded by the magistrate under Section 164 of the CrPC, but he was tutored by the accused side to say that the police forced him. He had so far not said that he was forced.” The SSP added, “He is the first person to turn hostile (in the trial).”

In the trial this week, a witness from Bengaluru – who was approached by four people, including three key accused in the case – recounted his efforts to find a house for the accused in Bengaluru in August 2017, a month before the murder.

The witness told the court that he was randomly approached by a man who identified as Ananth Kamath to find a house for his friend in Bengaluru. The witness reportedly showed Kamath and one other person, who came with him, properties in the congested Chamarajpet area of west Bengaluru which was rejected.

The witness stated that the people were seeking a secluded house and he suggested going towards the city’s outskirts in Kumbalgodu. They later went for lunch and two others who had been traveling in Kamath’s Toyota Innova did not join for lunch, the witness said.

During the trial this week, the witness also identified Mohan Nayak – accused number 11 in the case – in whose name a house was eventually rented out on the outskirts of Bengaluru under the guise of running a traditional medicine centre. The shooters allegedly stayed in this house as visitors in August 2017, weeks before the September 5 murder.

The witness also identified accused number one Amol Kale, the alleged main conspirator and former convenor of the right-wing Hindu Janajagruti Samiti in Pune, as a second visitor, and accused number five Amit Degwekar, an activist of the right-wing outfit the Sanatan Sanstha, an alleged key financier of the murder plot, as a third visitor.

The businessman Ananth Kamath who sought out his services to find a house subsequently called him again in 2018 to find a house, the witness reported. Kamath, who has associated with the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti in coastal Karnataka, is not an accused in the case but his facilities were used by the right-wing extremist group, as per the SIT investigation.

The key suspects used Kamath’s car to travel around Bengaluru in the period leading to the murder and his farm property in Dakshina Kannada’s Dharmasthala area was allegedly used for an arms and explosives training camp ahead of the August 2015 murder of Kannada scholar M M Kalburgi, 77, in Dharwad by the same right-wing extremist gang linked to the Lankesh murder.

Kamath has denied knowledge of the intent of the accused in the Gauri Lankesh murder case and the usage of his farmhouse for training purposes by the right-wing extremist outfit.

In the trial this week, a ballistics expert from the Karnataka Forensic Science Laboratory also deposed about his findings from the crime scene of September 5, 2017 at the Rajarajeshwari Nagar home of Gauri Lankesh and visits to a farm in Belagavi belonging to an accused Bharat Kurne, and a Belagavi forest region shown by an accused where the shooters in the Lankesh murder received training in August 2017.

The forensic expert reported finding empty cartridges and bullets of 7.65-mm calibre in the Kineye forest region in Belagavi. A forensic report has indicated that a 7.65-mm pistol used to gun down Gauri Lankesh was in the possession of the right-wing gang at the training. The bullets and cartridges recovered from the forest site where the alleged shooters were trained have also matched with the bullets and cartridges from the murder scene.

Since the trial began on July 4, 2022, the special court has examined more than 80 of the over 400 witnesses in the case.

The Karnataka Police SIT has named 17 people from right-wing Hindutva fringe outfits for the conspiracy and murder of Gauri Lankesh. The journalist was killed after four bullets were fired at her by a man now identified by the SIT as Parashuram Waghmore, a former activist of the right-wing Sri Rama Sene group.

A forensic analysis of the four empty cartridges and the four bullets fired to kill Lankesh showed that the markings on the bullets and cartridges were the same as markings found on bullets and cartridges recovered from the site of the killing of Kannada scholar and researcher M M Kalburgi in the northern Karnataka town of Dharwad on August 30, 2015.

Findings from the comparison of ballistic evidence from the Lankesh and Kalburgi cases also revealed that the 7.65 mm country-made gun used in the two murders in Karnataka had also been used in the shooting of the Leftist thinker Govind Pansare, 81, in Maharashtra’s Kolhapur on February 16, 2015.

The ballistic evidence also indicated that one of the two guns used in the Pansare murder was used to kill the rationalist Narendra Dabholkar, 69, in Pune on August 20, 2013. “The members of this organisation targeted persons whom 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 SIT said after it filed a 9,235-page chargesheet against the accused in the case on November 23, 2018.