Gauri Lankesh murder: Supreme Court upholds accused Mohan Nayak's bail

The Supreme Court on August 20 refused to cancel the bail granted to murder accused Mohan Nayak in connection with the killing of activist Gauri Lankesh [Kavitha Lankesh vs State of Karnataka and anr].A Bench of Justices Bela M Trivedi and Satish Chandra Sharma upheld an order of the Karnataka High Court in this regard, after noting that the accused had been cooperating with the trial court.The Karnataka High Court had granted bail to Nayak in December 2023 after noting that the trial may take time."It is not disputed that the Respondent No.2 – Sri Mohan Nayak N ... has cooperated with the trial court in proceeding further with the trial and has not sought any adjournment. He is in custody since 18-7-2018. Under the circumstances, we are not inclined to interfere with the impugned orders passed by the High Court ... The Special Leave Petitions are dismissed accordingly," the Supreme Court ordered..The Bench was hearing pleas opposing the Karnataka High Court's decision to grant bail to Mohan Nayak, who is among those accused in the Gauri Lankesh murder case.The Supreme Court had in January sought the response of the Karnataka government and Nayak to the plea filed by Kavitha Lankesh, the sister of the deceased.The State government's appeal was also dismissed in Tuesday's order..The counsel for the State of Karnataka pointed had stated that around 100 witnesses are left to be examined.The Bench eventually refusing to entertain the appeals noted that the parties are at liberty to move the trial court for cancellation of bail if the accused breaches any of the bail conditions or delays the trial..Journalist and activist Gauri Lankesh was shot dead in 2017.On December 7, 2023, the Karnataka High Court granted bail to Mohan Nayak, one among the accused in the case. He was the first person to get bail in the case.High Court judge Justice S Viashwajith Shetty granted him bail after noting that none of the twenty-three 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.Most of those witnesses have only spoken about Nayak taking a house on rent at Kumbalagodu in the outskirts of Bengaluru, it added.Before this, the High Court had denied Nayak regular bail twice.In July this year, the High Court granted bail to three other accused, Amit Digvekar, KT Naveen Kumar and HL Suresh..Senior Advocates Huzefa Ahmadi and Aparna Bhat with advocates Rohan Sharma, Karishma Maria, Pooja B Mehta, Yash S Vijay, and Rashmi Singh appeared for Kavitha Lankesh before the Supreme Court.Senior Advocate Sidharth Luthra with Additional Advocate General Avishkar Singhvi and Advocate VN Raghupathy appeared for the Karnataka government.Advocates Gautam S Bharadwaj, Ashwin Kumar DS, Surbhi Mehta and Ishan Roy Chowdhury appeared for Mohan Nayak..[Read order]