 "Gauri Lankesh assassination: Theory of Naxal hand has many holes, but Karnataka cops remain circumspect")
On 6 September, Indrajit Lankesh, Gauri Lankesh’s brother, said, “She was working to rehabilitate Naxals. This initiative did not go down well with the Maoist group. There were lot of voices against it. I know that Naxals had printed pamphlets in the Western Ghats that warned their fellow Maoists against joining the mainstream. I am told by my sources and investigation agencies that Gauri received hate mail and letters from the Naxals.’’ A day later, sister Kavita Lankesh was emphatic that was a wrong angle to pursue. “There was no Naxal threat so do not mislead. Naxals are not terrorists. I do not think it was the Naxals who killed her,’’ said Kavita. Indrajit kept silent when Kavita refuted his theory at a press conference in Bengaluru. He subsequently clarified saying he was led to believe that the Karnataka government had said it will specifically probe the Naxal angle. In fact, the state’s home minister had said that all angles, including a Naxal hand behind the murder, will be investigated. [caption id=“attachment_4014989” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of Gauri Lankesh. PTI[/caption] Senior Karnataka police officers who are engaged in anti-Naxal operations say a Maoist angle to Gauri’s murder is in the “realm of possibilities’’ but in the absence of any real motive, it would be a case of “far-fetched and extreme conjecture’’. They say this on the basis of the situation on the ground in Karnataka, where according to them, very few Maoists are left. “Most of them have moved to the tri-junction area of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala, where the police force of the other two states have been close on their heels,” says a senior officer. The arrest of Maoist couple — Roopesh and Shina — in Coimbatore in May 2015, along with three other Maoists was a major breakthrough that dented the Naxal strength in the zone. Those familiar with how the Maoist outfit operates will tell you that a classical Naxal operation would entail the party unit — in this case, the South West Regional Bureau of the CPI (Maoist) - taking responsibility for carrying out the hit within 24 hours. For the Maoists, elimination of a class or ideological foe is an achievement to be bragged about as it fits in with their propaganda narrative. In this case, no one has come forward to do that. There could, of course, be a slim chance of a renegade being involved but again that has to be for a personal motive, not for ideological reasons.
Let us look at Gauri’s engagement with the Maoists. She, like her father, the late P Lankesh, did not believe in violence so to irresponsibly brand her a Naxal or a Naxal sympathiser as some ill-informed voices on social media are doing, would be erroneous. She has worked as an interlocutor between the Maoists and the Karnataka government to convince the outlaws to embrace the mainstream.
“She was the real bridge,’’ recalls an officer who was privy to the efforts at that time. “She would flesh out the details in order to convince both the Naxals and the Karnataka State level committee to walk the extra mile,” he adds. Nine Naxals surrendered as a result of Gauri’s efforts under the Extremists Rehabilitation Package of the government. It is a different matter that by the time the likes of Srimanne Nagaraja and Noor Zulfiqar surrendered in 2014, they had been sidelined within the party and the exit route, that Gauri offered on behalf of the government, seemed the best option. Another hole in the Naxal theory is the fact that the Reds hero worship Saketh Rajan, their party state secretary who was killed in an encounter in February 2005. Saketh and Gauri were together in college and were very close friends. According to Indrajit, it was Saketh’s interview to Gauri just before his death that created fissures in the Lankesh Patrike. Indrajit was opposed to the publication of the interview in Lankesh Patrike and that eventually led to the split in the weekly tabloid. Gauri was among those who insisted on a re-post-mortem on Saketh’s body and the Naxals still hold her in high esteem. They still observe the day Saketh was killed as a major event marking his ‘martyrdom’. Senior cops who were part of the Anti-Naxal Squad recall recovering Naxal literature in which Saketh is written about in glowing terms. The forensic report will give a sense of the kind of weapon that was used to kill Gauri at point blank range. Experts, however, point out that a countrymade firearm does not necessarily point the needle of suspicion at Naxals because they are known to use sophisticated weapons in the Red corridor. A 21-member Special Investigation Team headed by IG (Intelligence) has been formed and with the unsolved Kalburgi case like an albatross around the neck of the Karnataka police, there is immense pressure on the SIT to crack the Gauri murder case at the earliest. “Given that there are very few clues, barring grainy CCTV footage and the ballistic report, zeroing in on the assailant and the mastermind at this point in time is like searching for a needle in a haystack,” says an officer.
