Gauri Lankesh
| Photo Credit: file photo
The High Court of Karnataka on Tuesday (July 16) granted bail to three more accused persons in the murder of editor-activist Gauri Lankesh, who was shot dead at her residence on September 5, 2017.
Earlier case
The court, in December 2023, had granted bail to another accused, Mohan Nayak N., who is arraigned as Accused Number 11, on the ground that the trial has been delayed for no fault of his and that it might not be completed any time soon.
Justice S. Vishwajith Shetty passed the order allowing the petitions filed by the three accused – Amit Digvekar (38), who is arraigned as Accused Number 5, Suresh H.L (40), Accused Number 7, and K.T. Naveen Kumar (43), Accused Number 17.
Same ground
The three petitioners had sought bail on the same ground of delay in trial while relying on the reasons cited by the court in its judgement of granting bail to Nayak.
The petitioner-accused were charged with the offence of criminal conspiracy under the Indian Penal Code and also under the provisions of the Karnataka Control of Organised Crimes Act (KCOCA), 2000. Naveen’s first bail bail petition was rejected by the court earlier. All three of them were arrested in 2018.
The High Court, while granting bail to Nayak in December 2023, had noted that only 90 of the 527 charge-sheet witnesses were examined in the past two years. However, now it was brought to the notice of the court by the advocates of these three accused-petitioners that only 130 witnesses have been examined so far of the total 527.
Apex court judgement
Senior Advocate Aruna Shyam M., who represented accused Naveen, had relied on the recent judgement of the apex court, which has held that “if the state or any prosecuting agency, including the court concerned, has no wherewithal to provide or protect the fundamental right of an accused to have a speedy trial as enshrined under Article 21 of the Constitution then the state or any other prosecuting agency should not oppose the plea for bail on the ground that the crime committed is serious.”
The apex court had made these observations while granting bail to Javed Gulam Nabi Shaikh, an accused charge-sheeted by the National Investigation Agency for allegedly smuggling counterfeit notes from Pakistan to Mumbai. In that case, the trial had not even commenced even though the NIA had filed a charge sheet way back in 2020.
