Gauri Lankesh Got Maoists to Surrender, But State Govt Offered No Protection: BJP

Senior journalist Gauri Lankesh was shot dead outside her Bengaluru home by suspected hired killers. (Network18 Creatives)

New Delhi: Bringing in the Naxal angle to the investigation of Gauri Lankesh murder, law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has sought to know if Siddaramaiah government was aware that the deceased journalists was engaged in getting Maoist leaders to surrender before the state.

“Why was Gauri Lankesh not given protection by the state government?” Prasad asked Karnataka government while addressing a press conference at BJP Headquarters in Delhi.

Gauri Lankesh’s brother Indrejeet in interviews to media organisations has talked about his sister’s efforts to bring Naxal leaders to the political mainstream. Prasad, while carefully articulating BJP’s position on the issue, quoted extensively from Indrajeet’s observations to the media after the murder.

Lankesh also belongs to a politically dominant Lingayat community, which is the bedrock of BJP’s social coalition in Karnataka. There is already a movement within a section of the community seeking that Lingayats be recognized as a separate religious group. And any sparks triggered by the political blame-game on Lankesh’s murder can flare up a political controversy in the poll-bound state.

So launching a counter offensive on the Opposition for instigating a “mala fide and prejudice” campaign for political reasons, the BJP has also accused the Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi of vitiating the investigations by naming RSS and rightwing groups within hours of the murder.

Ravi Shankar Prasad also underscored the selective outrage by a section of the political parties and intelligentsia over of political in Karnataka and Kerala. The law minister sought to know from the Opposition if “RSS workers being hacked to death by the CPM cadres have the rights as others or not?”