Gauri Lankesh murder case

THE Karnataka Police has finally claimed to have cracked the Gauri Lankesh murder case. Like all police briefings in the first flush of rounding up of suspects, all assertions need to be taken with a pinch of salt. A frail, fiery activist-journalist, Gauri had unapologetically inserted herself in the maelstrom of local politics. Her forte was her anti-establishment stance with an unalloyed tinge of secularism which also became the reason for her death. But what we have from the police so far is a two-tone, confusing account of investigations. The Karnataka Police is lucid on the six suspects; their earlier contribution to raising the Hindutva pitch in ways unconstitutional is supposed to consecrate its version about their involvement in the extant murder. 

But elusiveness takes over in painting the larger picture of conspiracy. The police have let it be known that most of those allegedly complicit in Gauri’s killing belonged to a 60-member faceless, nameless organisation spread over five states. The police’s reticence or the inability to present a sharper contour about this apparently sinister body, spread over five states and specialising in the assassinations of ideological thorns in the Hindutva flesh, is confounding. This is especially so when the police are portraying the suspected killer as contrite and regretful. The Karnataka Police, more than trying to corner glory for, admittedly some police footwork, needs to reflect over the need to soft-pedal the busting of a sustained and murderous approach at political muzzling.

The police lost precious time in unravelling the murder of Gauri’s ideological fellow traveller MM Kalburgi three years back. Since then, the intimidation of dissenters to Hindutva’s one-size-fits-all press-ganging gained critical mass, leading to yet another killing. Gauri had no illusions about Karnataka’s secular formation; then CM Siddaramaiah’s recant on his atheism came months before Kalburgi’s murder by when these forces had acquired an air of impunity and assurance with the formation of a new Union Government from within their flock. It is never too tough to arraign the gunslinger, as in the case of both Gauri Lankesh and Shujaat Bukhari. It is the network of masterminds and puppeteers that needs to be unravelled.