Journalists, Activists Remember Gauri Lankesh on Death Anniversary

Thousands, including Prakash Raj, Jignesh Mevani and Kanhaiya Kumar gathered to pay their tributes to Gauri Lankesh.

Writers, thinkers and journalists release the copy of newly launched Kannada tabloid “Nyaya Patha” during the ‘Freedom of Expression Meet’, organised on the first death anniversary of Gauri Lankesh on Sept 5, 2018.

Image Courtesy: PTI

Video Editor: Abhishek Sharma

Girish Karnad, Prakash Raj, Jignesh Mevani, Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and thousands of others gathered in Bengaluru to pay their tributes to Gauri Lankesh on her first death anniversary on 5 September.

Activists demanded strict measures to ban the radical Hindu group Sanatan Sanstha, which police have linked to Lankesh’s assassination. Meanwhile, Lankesh’s weekly publication Gauri Lankesh Patrike returned to business on 5 September 2018 with a new name, Nyaya Patha, and a special issue.

Actor Prakash Raj, a close friend on Gauri, warned of more attacks against liberal voices.

They tried to silence her. We know now that they didn’t hate Gauri, but they hated voices like hers. The way Gauri has become a legend now, the way she sacrificed herself, like Dabolkar, Pansare and Kalburgi before her. Now, the truth behind the attacks and the institutions orchestrating them is slowly coming out.

Prakash Raj, Actor

Noted Kannada writer Professor Chandrashekhar Patil, also on the hit list of the killers behind Lankesh’s murder, said that the pen was all that writers and thinkers like him had and that they would fight back. Patil also announced that he would restart his column in the paper Nyaya Patha.