The Supreme Court has upheld the Karnataka High Court order of December 2023, which granted bail to Mohan Nayak, an accused in the murder case of activist Gauri Lankesh.
The Bench of Justice Bela M Trivedi and Justice Satish Chandra Sharma on Tuesday refused to interfere with the High Court verdict on the ground that the accused, who has remained in custody since July 18, 2018, has cooperated with the trial court in proceedings, and has never sought any adjournment during the trial.
Dismissing the Special Leave Petitions filed by the State of Karnataka and Gauri’s sister Kavitha Lankesh, the Apex Court granted liberty to the petitioners to move the trial court for cancellation of bail, in case the accused breached any of the bail conditions or delayed the trial.
The counsel appearing for the State of Karnataka pointed out that around 100 witnesses were left to be examined. However, the Bench dismissed the state government’s appeal.
Earlier in January this year, the top court of the country issued notice to the Karnataka government and Nayak on Kavitha Lankesh’s petition.
Journalist and activist Gauri Lankesh was shot dead outside her home in west Bengaluru by two motorcycle-borne assailants on the night of September 5, 2017.
The High Court granted bail to Mohan on December 7, 2023 on the ground that none of the 23 witnesses who spoke about the role of Nayak, said that he was part of a meeting where the accused persons allegedly conspired to murder Lankesh.
The single-judge Bench of Justice S Viashwajith Shetty further noted that most of those witnesses only spoke about Nayak taking a house on rent at Kumbalagodu in the outskirts of Bengaluru. He was the first person to get bail in the case.
In July 2024, the High Court granted bail to three other accused – Amit Digvekar, KT Naveen Kumar and HL Suresh.
Mohan Nayak was represented by Advocates Gautam S Bharadwaj, Ashwin Kumar DS, Surbhi Mehta and Ishan Roy Chowdhury.
Senior Advocates Huzefa Ahmadi and Aparna Bhat, along with Advocates Rohan Sharma, Karishma Maria, Pooja B Mehta, Yash S Vijay, and Rashmi Singh, appeared for Kavitha Lankesh in the Supreme Court.
The Karnataka government was represented by Senior Advocate Sidharth Luthra, along with Additional Advocate General Avishkar Singhvi and Advocate VN Raghupathy.