Gauri Lankesh murder: BJP attacks Rahul Gandhi, says 'great leader' has given the verdict without probe

Picture Courtesy: ANI

New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday attacked Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi over blaming the party for the murder of senior journalist-activist Gauri Lankesh. Addressing media, Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad asked Rahul Gandhi to stop politicising the murder and asked why the Congress government in Karnataka did not provide security to Lankesh. 

"We ask Karnataka CM was she (GauriLankesh) helping naxals surrender with govt's consent and if so why was she not given security? Condemning every murder correct but why my liberal friends maintained silence after killings of BJP-RSS workers in Kerala and Karnataka," Prasad asked. 

"Even before the 'i' of investigation could start, the great leader Rahul Gandhi, who always speaks without homework, alleged publicly that the RSS and right-wing ideology is involved. He's given the verdict of 'guilty'. In the light of this malafide comment, should we expect a fair investigation from the Congress government in Karnataka?" Times of India quoted Prasad as saying. 

Yesterday also, the BJP had accused Gandhi of trying to make 'political capital' out of Lankesh's murder and rejected as "irresponsible and baseless" the allegations linking the killing to the people following its ideology.

Attacking the Siddaramaiah government for the state's poor law and order situation, Union minister Ananth Kumar had said there had been 18-19 political killings besides Kalburgi's murder in the last two and a half years and it had "failed" in taking probes to their logical conclusion.

Earlier while criticising the BJP government, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi had said, anybody who speaks against the ideology of the BJP-RSS is “pressured, beaten, attacked and even killed. Gandhi also hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying the PM was a “skilled Hindutva politician”. 

“People say that the Prime Minister is quiet and Prime Minister has not said anything. The point is the entire ideology is to silence voices,” he told reporters.

Lankesh was an outspoken critic of Hindutva politics. She was shot dead on Tuesday by unidentified gunmen at around 8-8:30 p.m.outside her residence in Bengaluru.

As per the reports, three bullets were pumped in her body. Her last rites were held at Bengaluru's Chamrajpet Cemetery earlier in the day.