3 min readBengaluruJun 11, 2026 04:15 AM IST
First published on: Jun 10, 2026 at 02:30 PM IST
The trial in the Gauri Lankesh murder case, in which a chargesheet was filed in November 2018 against 17 accused people belonging to right-wing Hindutva groups, has now moved into the hands of a seventh judge.
On Tuesday, K S Bharath Kumar began conducting the trial after the transfer of the previous judge, M Chandrashekar Reddy, to a senior administrative role in the Karnataka High Court.
The new judge, who took charge of the principal district and sessions court in Bengaluru on June 1, began by recording the statement of a police constable, who is the 216th of 400 prosecution witnesses in the case.
The trial has been conducted daily since it started on July 4, 2022, even though the Special Investigation Team of the Karnataka police filed the chargesheet on November 23, 2018.
The new judge was earlier an administrator at the high court, and his predecessor also served in an administrative role in the Karnataka Lokayukta before being made the principal judge for the district of Bengaluru in November 2025, sources in the legal system said.
All other judges who previously conducted the trial in the case—S Amarannavar, Anil Katti, C M Joshi, Ramakrishna Huddar and B Muralidhar Pai—were elevated to the high court. When C M Joshi was the principal judge, a schedule for a speedy trial was assigned, with one week of continuous hearing conducted every month.
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 as Parashuram Waghmore, 26, a former member of the Sri Rama Sena in Bijapur, and Ganesh Miskin, 27, a right-wing activist from Hubbali.
The SIT has stated that the journalist was killed by members of extremist right-wing groups that created a syndicate to carry out killings and attacks on Hindutva’s critics, primarily in Karnataka and Maharashtra, between 2013 and 2018.
“The members of this organisation targeted people they identified as inimical to their beliefs and ideology. The members strictly followed the guidelines and principles mentioned in Kshatra Dharma Sadhana, a book published by the Sanatan Sanstha,” the SIT said after it filed a chargesheet against the accused in the case.
In May 2025, one of the witnesses from Belagavi, who had earlier provided a court statement about attending training camps attended by outside experts, turned hostile and denied his earlier statements.
A prosecution witness from Udupi in Karnataka, who was also identified among the people recruited by the right-wing Hindutva syndicate for extremist activities, denied attending meetings and a training camp of the group.
Another prosecution witness, who is linked to the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti and alleged to have loaned his Splendor motorcycle to an accused to facilitate the recce of the journalist’s home in Bengaluru, also turned hostile.
Gauri Lankesh was shot dead outside her home in West Bengaluru on the night of September 5, 2017, by two motorcycle-borne assassins. (Express file photo) 
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