Karnataka BJP Yuva Morcha has issued a legal notice to historian and writer Ramachandra Guha, on Monday. The legal notice demanded an unconditional apology from Guha for alleging that the Sangh Parivar’ was behind the murder of journalist Gauri Lankesh.
Notice: Baseless Utterances to Mislead Investigation
The notice was issued by a city based legal firm, on behalf of Karunakar Khasale, State Secretary of BJP Yuva Morcha. The notice, a copy of which India Today has, reads:
Your deliberate, false and calculated statement against our client’s organisation has caused great anguish in the minds thousands of its members and sympathisers. Your baseless utterances are also calculated to influence and mislead the on-going investigations of the said incidents. This amounts to illegal interference in the course of justice and is also a grave offence.
The four page legal notice states that, in an interview to a news website, Guha said: “It is very likely that her murderers came from the same Sangh Parivar from which the murderers of Dabholkar, Pansare and Kalburgi came.”
Although Guha had not mentioned the BJP Yuva Morcha in the said interview, the legal notice alleged that Guha had pointed at BJP Yuva Morcha as the perpetrators of Gauri Lankesh’s murder.
Stating this as an intentional attempt to mislead the investigation, the BJP Yuva morcha has slapped the legal notice against Guha, setting an ultimatum of three days to issue an unconditional apology, failing which they will “initiate civil and criminal prosecution”.
“It is pertinent to note that investigations are being conducted into the deaths of late Mr Dabholkar, Mr Pansare, Mr Kalburgi and Ms Gauri Lankesh by the jurisdictional investigating authorities, and are still in progress. As of today, and the date of the aforesaid interview given by you, the investigations into the said incidents are still in progress and has not yet concluded,” read the legal notice.
Guha on Twitter
A little after news of a notice being slapped on Guha got out, he published a Tweet that read, “We no longer live in Vajpayee’s India,” and another that read, “Independent writers and journalists are harassed, persecuted and even killed. But we shall not be silenced”.
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