Outcry in India after gunmen kill outspoken journalist
TENS of thousands of demonstrators gathered in several Indian cities yesterday to protest over the murder of a prominent journalist outside her home in Bangalore.
Human rights organisations and opposition party leaders strongly condemned the shooting of 55-year-old Gauri Lankesh by two gunmen, as she left her car to open the gate to her house in a city suburb, at around 8pm local time on Tuesday.
After the shooting, witnesses said her assailants fled on a motorcycle.
Senior police officers said the killers fired at least seven rounds at Lankesh, three of which hit her in the neck and chest, killing her instantly.
Police were analysing footage from CCTV cameras recently installed at Lankesh’s home, after she received social media threats from Right-wing Hindu organisations, which she had criticised for their disruptive agenda.
Last November, Lankesh, who edited Lankesh Patrike, a family-owned newspaper, was convicted in two separate defamation cases for a 2008 article criticising the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Narendra Modi, the prime minister. She accused the BJP and its numerous affiliates of espousing Hindutva (Hindu hegemony), fomenting intolerance and destroying India’s secularism.
Lankesh, who was released on bail in both cases, last November accused the BJP of trying to silence her in an interview with News Laundry, an independent online current affairs programme.
The Editors Guild of India said Lankesh’s killing was an “ominous portent for dissent in democracy and a brutal assault on … press freedom”.