New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday revived the organised crime charges against Mohan Nayak, one of the accused in the 2017 murder case of journalist-turned-activist Gauri Lankesh.
In its order, a bench of justices A M Khanwilkar, Dinesh Maheshwari and C T Ravikumar set aside the Karnataka High Court order, dropping the Karnataka Control of Organised Crime Act (KCOCA) charges against Nayak.
Gauri Lankesh was shot dead outside her residence in Bengaluru on September 5, 2017.
Kavita Lankesh, sister of Gauri Lankesh, had filed a special leave petition in the apex court, challenging the High Court order and seeking a direction for invoking the KCOCA charges.
On June 29 this year, the Supreme Court issued notice to the Karnataka government and others, after hearing the SLP.
Senior lawyer Hufeza Ahmadi, appearing for Kavita, had submitted before the apex court that Nayak, accused number 6 in the case, was relying on the impugned judgment of the High Court to seek bail.
The apex court had observed that a decision on the bail application of the accused should be “uninfluenced” by the impugned verdict.
In her plea, Kavita also challenged the suggestion to club the investigation into her murder with those of writer MM Kalburgi, and rationalists Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare, and hand it over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
The petition submitted that the High Court erred by “not examining the scheme of Section 24 of KCOCA which states that prior approval ought not to be granted by any officer below the rank of Additional Director General (ADG) of Police which has been duly complied with in the present case”.
UNI
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