K'taka HC grants bail to 3 accused in Gauri Lankesh murder case

Bengaluru, NT Bureau: The Karnataka High Court on Tuesday granted bail to three men accused in the 2017 murder of activist-journalist Gauri Lankesh, reported Bar and Bench.

Lankesh, the editor of a periodical named Gauri Lankesh Patrike and a prominent critic of Hindutva groups, was shot dead outside her home in Bengaluru’s Rajarajeshwari Nagar by a group of men on the night of September 5, 2017, as she was returning home from work.

The Karnataka government had opposed the bail pleas of the three accused persons: Amit Digvekar, KT Naveen Kumar and HL Suresh.

All three had applied for bail citing the example of Mohan Nayak, another man accused of Lankesh’s murder, who was granted bail by the High Court in December on the grounds of a delay in the completion of his trial. Nayak, who had been in prison since July 2018, was initially denied bail by the court on two occasions.