Last week, a witness in the 2017 murder case of journalist Gauri Lankesh testified in a special court that in 2018 he had seen the identification of a location in Mangalore where a member of the crime syndicate arrested for the murder claimed to have stayed in the plot. In 2016, rationalist Narendra Nayak was attacked.
The 58-year-old witness told the special court on December 5 that he was called by the police on July 28, 2018 in Mangalore to witness the locations shown by alleged arms trainer Rajesh Bangera for the crime syndicate. Monitoring new targets and training shooters.
A panchnama witness (a person who testifies to the crime scene investigation details recorded in a document called a panchnama) identified accused number eight in Lankesh’s murder as the person who claimed to have imparted weapons training to the shooters of 56-year-old Bangera. in Mangalore and also monitored the activities of Nayak.
Bangera alleged that the accused shooter involved in the murder, former Sri Rama Sena activist Parasuram Waghmore from Vijayapura area and other youths from Karnataka and Maharashtra were trained by the crime syndicate to use guns to commit murders between 2012 and 2018. .
Bangera took the police team and witnesses to a secluded spot on Vitla Road, where he claimed to have trained some youths in the use of firearms, and then to a spot near the Mangala Stadium in Mangalore, where he claimed to have conducted surveillance. Nayak told the court for two days.
Karnataka’s Special Investigation Team (SIT) has arrested 17 people for allegedly shooting Lankesh at his doorstep on the night of September 5, 2017 in Bengaluru.
The SIT filed a 9,235-page charge sheet on November 23, 2018, alleging that the murder was carried out by an organized crime syndicate group whose key members acted according to the principles and guidelines outlined in the book Kshatradharma Sadhana. Sanatan Sanstha, a radical right-wing group.
The trial of the case has been going on since July 2022 and 16 of the 17 accused, including Bangera, have been granted bail due to delays in the proceedings. However, five people have not been released from prison due to other cases against them. Lankesh murder was heard for the first time from December 4 for two consecutive weeks.
Members of the right-wing crime syndicate accused in Lankesh’s murder were also involved 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). Scholar MM Kalburgi at Dharwad, Karnataka on August 30, 2015.
What the SIT chargesheet indicates in other plots
The SIT indicated in its chargesheet that the right-wing extremist group involved in the September 2017 shooting of Lankesh had also watched his activities after identifying Nayak as a target in Mangalore in 2016.
The SIT has attached details of panchnamas at various places in Mangalore. Bangera and a Mangalore youth, who had been trained to recruit and attack, monitored the activities of the rationalists for two days. According to Panchnama, a colleague living in Mangalore pointed out Bangera, the logician’s house.
The SIT investigation also found that Bangera had trained four youths in gun handling before doing surveillance work. According to court documents, Bangera took one of the trained youths with him for surveillance activities.
The SIT has also found a diary belonging to prime accused Amol Kale, which lists Bhagwan, NN, Nijuguanand and Kaka as “targets” for “KA new practice and deployment”.
The SIT indicated that this entry in Amol Kale’s diary outlined plans by the right-wing extremist group to target four individuals: writer KS Bhagwan in Mysore, rationalist Narendra Nayak in Mangalore, anti-superstition campaigner and seer Swami Nijuguananda, and late playwright Girish Karnad in Bengaluru.
The diary entry also lists the identities of the gang members identified as having carried out the four attacks – “Govind, the Builder” (now identified as Ganesh Miskin and Parashuram Waghmore, the rider in the Lankesh shootout) is listed against Bhagwan. Nickname “Driver” against target NN, Nickname “Fal” against name Nijuguananda and “Laundry” against target identified as uncle.
The group was reportedly in the advanced stages of targeting Kannada writer KS Bhagwan in Mysore in February 2018 when the SIT probe into the Lankesh murder yielded a breakthrough, resulting in a setback to the plan.
The Karnataka police have registered a separate case in connection with the conspiracy to kill KS Bhagwan and seven of the 18 people involved in the Lankesh murder have been charged.