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The SIT chargesheet in Gauri Lankesh murder case names extreme right-wing outfit Sanatan Sanstha 

Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister G Parameshwara said today (Saturday, Nov 24) that the state government would soon take a call on banning the extreme right-wing outfit Sanatan Sanstha, the organisation.

The statement came a day after a Special Investigating team (SIT) of the Karnataka Police, probing the murder of journalist Gauri Lankesh, filed an additional chargesheet naming the outfit as being behind the murder.

“No discussions have taken place regarding the organisations involved in the crime, but shortly we will take a decision on that,” Parmeshwara was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.

The SIT has sought time from the court to investigate the case further. It had named 18 persons, including shooter Parashuram Waghmare and masterminds Amol Kale, Sujith Kumar alias Praveen and Amit Degwekar in the 9,235-page chargesheet on Friday.

The gang is suspected to be involved in the killing of three other rationalists MM Kalburgi, Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare. The chargesheet also explains that the larger conspiracy was to strategically eliminate 43 other liberals and rationalists in Karnataka, Goa and Maharashtra, some of whom survived murder attempts.

The chargesheet filed Friday is the second in the case after the SIT on May 30 filed a preliminary chargesheet against KT Naveen Kumar, the first suspect who was arrested on March 2.

In its first chargesheet, the SIT quoted Kumar as saying that Lankesh was killed for her “anti-Hindu views”. Kumar, 37, a member of the Hindu Yuva Sena, was allegedly told of the murder plot after he attended a convention of the Sanatan Sanstha and HJS in Goa in June 2017.

Lankesh, 55, known for her left-leaning and strong anti-Hindutva views, was shot dead in front of her house in Bengaluru on September 5 last year, triggering nationwide outrage.

In the additional charge sheet filed in the Principal Civil and Sessions court in Bengaluru on Friday, the SIT stated that the murder of journalist and activist Gauri Lankesh was an “organised crime” and a network within Sanatan Sanstha targeted her for no personal reasons. It also said the planning to kill her Lankesh took place for almost five years.

“The killer and the killed have no personal or any other enmity. Why she was killed? Because she believed in certain ideology, she wrote and spoke on that. So, it must be an ideology and it must be an organisation,” Special Public Prosecutor S Balan told PTI.

The chargesheet named 18 persons as accused, of whom sixteen named as primary perpetrators have been arrested while two are absconding.

The chargesheet has named Amol Kale, 37, a former Pune convenor of the Sanstha-affiliated Hindu Janajagruti Samiti as the prime accused in the murder plot allegedly executed by Parashuram Waghmare, 26, a member of the Sri Rama Sena. It states that Waghmare was recruited, trained and funded by Kale with the assistance of a secretive group linked to the Sanstha.

“It is an act of organised crime. The Sanatan Sanstha has been named in the chargesheet as the group that carried out the killing with the help of members of other fringe groups. The murder was planned by a group involved in such killings for five years,’’ special public prosecutor S Balan said after the chargesheet was presented to the court of the principal sessions judge in Bengaluru.

The chargesheet also explained the larger conspiracy was to strategically eliminate 43 other liberals and rationalists in Karnataka, Goa and Maharashtra, some of whom survived murder attempts.

The SIT observed that the accused allegedly had links with a Goa-based right-wing organisation. “Maharashtra based men like Amol Kale and Amit Digwekar had a strong relationship with the organisation,” the chargesheet said.

“We have sought permission to investigate further,’’ the SIT’s chief investigating officer MN Anucheth said.

Eight of the accused in the second chargesheet are from Maharashtra, including four — Shrikant Pangarkar, Sharad Kalaskar, Sudhanva Gondhalekar and Vasudev Suryavanshi — who were arrested in August by the Maharashtra ATS for alleged links to a right-wing terror plot in the state. The two persons yet to be arrested are Vikas Patil alias Nihal alias Dada and Murali alias Shiva who are accused of supporting the plot to murder Lankesh.

The case against the 18 persons named in the chargesheet is based on forensic findings, including ballistics and DNA evidence, and digital evidence, including CCTV footage and gait analysis. The SIT has obtained confession statements from several of the arrested persons which are valid as evidence under the Karnataka Control of Organized Crime Act, 2000.

The second chargesheet was filed on Friday since the mandated 180 day period for filing the chargesheet against four persons arrested on May 31 by the SIT — Amol Kale, Amit Degwekar, Manohar Edave and Sujeet Kumar — is set to lapse on November 30, the SPP Balan said.

Lankesh was killed on the evening of September 5, 2017 by Waghmare who fired four bullets at her while she was opening the gate to her home to park her car after returning from work, the SIT has said.

In its preliminary chargesheet, the SIT enclosed a ballistics report from the Karnataka Forensic Science Laboratory stating that Lankesh was killed with the same 7.65 mm country-made gun that was used to kill the Kannada scholar M M Kalburgi in Dharwad in Karnataka on August 30, 2015.

Forensic analysis conducted in 2015 by the Karnataka FSL of bullets and cartridges in the Kalburgi case, with those recovered from the scene of the shooting of the Leftist thinker Govind Pansare, 81, and his wife in Kolhapur on February 16, 2015, showed that one of two 7.65 mm country-made guns was used in both cases.

The ballistics report says that the second 7.65 mm gun used in the Pansare murder was used to kill the rationalist Narendra Dabholkar, 69, in Pune on August 20, 2013.

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