Supreme Court upholds Karnataka HC order granting bail to key accused in 2017 murder of journalist Gauri Lankesh

One of the arrested persons, Mohan Nayak was granted bail by the Karnataka High Court on December 7, 2023, citing the delay in the conduct of the trial in the case and his incarceration for nearly five years after his arrest in August 2018.

The Karnataka government and Kavitha had sought cancellation of the bail citing the pre-meditated and organised nature of the crime. Since the grant of bail to Nayak on December 7, 2023, three more accused — Amith Degwekar, H L Suresh and K T Naveen Kumar — have received bail in the murder case in the Karnataka High court on the grounds of a delay in the trial.

Degwekar, Suresh and Kimar are alleged members of an organised Right-wing Hindutva crime syndicate who were arrested in 2018. While Degwekar is accused in multiple Right-wing-linked extremism cases in Karnataka and Maharashtra, the others are only linked to the Gauri Lankesh murder.

The probe also found out that the three were associated with the radical Hindutva group the Sanatan Sanstha and its affiliate the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti in Goa and Karnataka.

What transpired this week

During the hearing in the Supreme Court this week, the senior counsel appearing for the Karnataka government told the court that 137 of over 500 witnesses had been examined by the prosecution with 137 witnesses being dropped and another 150 likely to be dropped, leaving only about 100 witnesses to be examined in the trial.

The Supreme Court was also informed that Nayak was co-operating in the trial since his release on bail in December 2023.

“Under the circumstances, we are not inclined to interfere with the impugned orders passed by the High Court. However, it is directed that the trial court shall expeditiously conduct the trial and all the parties shall cooperate with the trial court in concluding the trial,” a Supreme Court bench comprising Justice Bela Trivedi and Justice Satish Chandra Sharma stated.

Mohan Nayak and his connection in the Gauri Lankesh murder case

Nayak was arrested in July 2018 by a Karnataka SIT and has been under trial since July 2022. He was identified by witnesses as the man who rented out a house in the Thagachaguppe village near the Kumbalgodu area of west Bengaluru that was allegedly used by the shooters in the murder as a hideout before executing the killing.

Nayak’s phone number was also identified as the one that was used to communicate with the house owner for renting the house in August 2017 on the pretext of running an ayurvedic clinic. Soon after the murder, a decision was made to give up the house.

Previously, the bail pleas of Nayak, who is also accused of providing logistics like mobile phone SIM cards to the accused, had been rejected by the high court and district courts while the Supreme Court, in October 2021, had overturned a decision of the high court to drop Karnataka Control of Organised Crime Act, 2000, charges against him.

The SIT investigation also led to Nayak after his phone number was found in the diary of Amol Kale – a former Hindu Janajagruti Samiti activist – who is accused of running the covert operation to kill Gauri Lankesh and three other critics of Hindutva between 2013 and 2018 – Narendra Dabholkar, 69, and Govind Pansare, 81, in Maharashtra, and M M Kalburgi, 77, in Karnataka.

What led to Mohan Nayak getting bail

In the high court plea in which he was granted bail in December 2023, Nayak argued that there are 527 chargesheet witnesses and only 90 witnesses had been examined till date and that “the chances of trial being completed in the immediate near future is not there”.

The Karnataka SIT has argued in the courts that much of the delay in the trial was linked to frequent applications filed by the accused themselves and due to the Covid crisis in 2020 and 2021.

Gauri Lankesh, 55, an outspoken critic of Right-wing Hindutva, was shot dead outside her home in west Bengaluru on the night of September 5, 2017 by two motorcycle borne assassins identified by the SIT as Parashuram Waghmore, 26, a former member of the Sri Rama Sena in Bijapur, and Ganesh Miskin, 27, a Right-wing activist from Hubbali.

A Special Investigation Team of the Karnataka police has arrested and charged 17 people linked to extremist Right-wing Hindutva groups who created a syndicate to carry out killings and attacks on critics – primarily in Karnataka and Maharashtra – between 2013-2018.

“The members of this organization 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 SIT said after it filed a chargesheet against the accused in the case on November 23, 2018.