Gauri Lankesh murder trial: witness tells court key accused showed locations used for planning attack on rationalist Narendra Nayak

The panchnama witness (a person who testifies to the details of a crime scene investigation recorded in a document called a panchnama) identified Bangera, 56, accused number eight in the murder of Lankesh, as the person who claimed to have provided arms training to shooters in Mangalore and also conducted surveillance over the activities of Nayak.

Bangera is alleged to have trained the shooter accused in the murder, Parashuram Waghmore, a former Sri Rama Sena activist from the Vijayapura region, and other youths from Karnataka and Maharashtra recruited by a crime syndicate between 2012 and 2018 to use guns to carry out killings.

Bangera took the police team and witnesses to a secluded place on the Vitla road, where he claimed to have trained a few youths in the usage of guns and subsequently to a location near the Mangla stadium in Mangalore, where he claimed to have conducted surveillance over Nayak for two days, the witness told the court.

A Karnataka Special Investigation Team (SIT) has arrested 17 people for the shooting of Lankesh on the doorstep of her home in Bengaluru on the night of September 5, 2017.

The SIT filed a 9,235-page chargesheet on November 23, 2018, in the case, stating that the murder was carried out by an organised crime syndicate group whose key members acted according to principles and guidelines outlined in a book called Kshatra Dharma Sadhana published by the radical right-wing group Sanatan Sanstha.

The trial in the case has been underway since July 2022, and 16 of the 17 accused, including Bangera, have been granted bail because of a delay in proceedings. However, five of them have not been released from jail due to other cases against them. For the first time in the Lankesh murder, the trial has been held over two consecutive weeks since December 4.

The members of the right-wing crime syndicate accused in Lankesh’s murder were also implicated in the murders of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar in Pune on August 20, 2013, and leftist thinker Govind Pansare in Kolhapur on February 16, 2015 (both in Maharashtra), and scholar M M Kalburgi in Dharwad in Karnataka on August 30, 2015.

What the SIT chargesheet indicates on other plots

The SIT has indicated in its chargesheet that the right-wing extremist group involved in the shooting of Lankesh in September 2017 also watched over the activities of the Nayak in Mangalore in the year 2016 after identifying him as a target.

The SIT has enclosed details of panchnama at various locations in Mangalore. Bangera and a Mangalore youth, who was recruited and trained to carry out an attack, monitored the rationalist’s activities for two days. As per the panchnama, an associate living in Mangalore pointed out the rationalist’s home to Bangera.

The SIT probe has also found that Bangera trained four youths in the use of guns prior to carrying out the surveillance work. According to court documents, one of the youths who was trained was taken along by Bangera for the surveillance activity.

The SIT also found a diary belonging to the main accused, Amol Kale, with an entry stating “KA new practice and deployment” with the names Bhagawan, NN, Nijuguanand and Kaka listed as “targets”.

The SIT has indicated that this entry in the diary of Amol Kale outlined plans of the right-wing extremist group for targetting four people: writer K S Bhagawan in Mysore, rationalist Narendra Nayak in Mangalore, anti-superstition campaigner and seer Swami Nijuguanand, and the late playwright Girish Karnad in Bengaluru.

The diary entry also lists the identity of the gang members identified to carry out the four attacks – with the names “Govinda, Builder” (now identified as Ganesh Miskin and Parashuram Waghmore, the rider in the Lankesh shooting) listed against the target Bhagwan, the nickname “driver” against the target NN, the nickname “fruits” against the name Nijuguanand and the name “laundry” against the target identified as Kaka.

The group was allegedly in an advanced stage of targetting Kannada writer K S Bhagwan in Mysore in February 2018 when the SIT probe in the Lankesh murder achieved a breakthrough, resulting in a disruption of the plan.

A separate case has been registered by the Karnataka Police over the K S Bhagwan murder plot and seven of the 18 people accused in the Lankesh murder have been charged.