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CPI-Maoist says it had no hand in killing of journalist Gauri Lankesh
The outlawed party’s central committee spokesperson said Lankesh’s murder was a blatant attack on free speech and freedom of the press.
The outlawed Communist Party of India (Maoist) has denied it had any role in the murder of senior journalist Gauri Lankesh outside her house in Bengaluru and said it was the act of “Brahmanical Hindu-fascist goons of Sangh Parivar led by Mohan Bhagwat”.
In a statement dated September 9 that reached media on Thursday, its central committee spokesperson Abhay said Lankesh’s murder was not only a blatant attack on free speech and freedom of the press but an assault on all revolutionary, democratic, progressive, secular, and rational dissenting voices of the country.
The 55-year old editor of Kannada weekly Gauri Lankesh Patrike was a fierce critic of Hindu extremism and her death on September 5 triggered speculation that people connected to right-wing organisations may be behind her killing.
The Karnataka government has formed a special investigation team, headed by inspector general of police (intelligence) BK Singh, to probe the gunning down of Lankesh that triggered outrage and protests across the country. The investigators looking for the killers of Gauri Lankesh are yet to find any conclusive leads.
Abhay said the party rejected and condemned the patently false insinuation made by some leaders of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) suggesting the Maoists might be behind this murder.
“This is nothing but a futile attempt to divert the growing mass anger against the Sangh Parivar,” he said.
He added apart from silencing one of its most vocal critics, the Hindutva-fascists wanted to send out a clear warning through the murder of Lankesh that anyone who dared to put up a real opposition to the fascist juggernaut of “Narendra Modi-Amit Shah-Bhagwat ruling clique” would meet a similar fate.
“The Hindutva-fascists may kill some of us, jail many of us, and scare a larger number into silence temporarily. But they certainly cannot suppress the people forever and turn the wheels of history backwards. They will certainly be thrown into the dustbin of history by the masses who alone are the makers of history,” Abhay said.
He said his party has called upon the oppressed classes and the people of the country, including religious and national minorities, Dalits, Adivasis, intellectuals, and journalists to strongly protest Lankesh’s murder to demand prompt and stringent punishment of the perpetrators and to intensify the united countrywide people’s movement against Hindu-fascism.
