Lankesh killing: Court rejects bail plea of six accused

A SESSIONS court docket has rejected a bail plea — citing delays within the begin of their trial — of six of the 18 accused within the 2018 killing of journalist Gauri Lankesh, indicating that a part of the explanation for the delay was the frequent submitting of intervening functions by the accused themselves.
Amit Degwekar, Bharat Kurne, Rajesh Bangera, Sudhanwa Gondhalekar, Sujith Kumar and Manohar Edave, who’re related to Sanatan Sanstha and its affiliate Hindu Janajagruti Samiti, sought bail on the grounds that the trial of their case had not commenced regardless of a February 2019 court docket order to expedite it.
The accused had been arrested in 2018 after investigations revealed that they had been a part of a secretive outfit spawned by the Sanatan Sanstha’s extremist non secular ideology. The SIT probe revealed that members of the outfit gunned down Gauri Lankesh, 55, Kannada scholar M M Kalburgi, 77, and Maharashtra progressive thinkers Govind Pansare, 81 and Narendra Dabholkar, 69, between 2013 and 2018.

The classes court docket rejected their bail plea on February 20, stating that a part of the explanation for the delay within the graduation of the trial – aside from the Covid-19 disaster – was frequent functions filed by the accused.