Cops believe professionals killed Gauri, look for clues in CCTV footage

Bengaluru: Senior journalist and activist Gauri Lankesh may have been killed by hired professionals, the Bengaluru police suspect, hoping the CCTV cameras installed by the dead scribe might have caught them in the act.

Seven bullets were fired at senior journalist and activist Gauri Lankesh around 8 pm Tuesday, when she was about to enter her house. Three of those bullets hit her, killing her instantly.

It is reported the police have asked permission to unlock the footage captured in the two CCTV cameras that the journalist had installed utside her house.

The editor’s family had asked her to set up the camera as her house was surrounded by vacant plots.

Karnataka Home Minister TB Jayachandra has said a link cannot be ruled out between the murders of Lankesh and that of scholar M M Kalburgi who was shot dead two years ago when he opened his door to his killers in Dharwad, around 400 kilometres from Bengaluru.

The minister believes there must be some conspiracy behind the murder. “We can’t rule out that it is like the Kalburgi issue,” he said on Wednesday.

NDTV quotes her friends who see similarities between the deaths of Kalburgi and Lankesh. "We feel it's one group or organisation that's carrying out these attacks against people who are rationalists and anti-establishment," the channel quoted senior lawyer B T Venkatesh, who had known the editor for 25 years.

Home Minister Ramalinga Reddy told the media: “She called me last week. I was not home minister then. I asked her to come over. But she said she would meet me Monday. She did not come.”

Investigating teams suspect the murder was well planned. While it is said that two men followed Gauri's car on a bike, one was waiting at her residence.
"Usually, she left office and reached home only after 9 pm. But on Tuesday, she was early by an hour. But still the assailants managed to get her, which suggests that there was a proper ground work by them," an official said.
The location was an advantage for the assailants as the road was poorly lit and has many cross roads.
Apart from Lankesh and Kalburgi, two more rationalists and dissenting voices have been snuffed out – both in Maharashtra. Anti-superstition activist Narendra Dabholkar was killed in 2013 and Leftist thinker Govind Pansare in 2015.

They were all shot dead from close range, the bullets hitting their chest and head.