The Gauri Lankesh murder trial is set to resume before an eighth judge after judicial transfers stalled proceedings in Bengaluru, with the newly appointed principal city civil and sessions judge holding his first hearing to schedule the next dates in the case.
Ravindra Hegde, a district judge and former registrar of the Karnataka High Court, took charge as Bengaluru’s principal city civil and sessions judge on October 5. He held his first hearing in the case on Thursday after replacing K S Bharath Kumar, who was elevated to the High Court. Kumar had taken over the trial from M Chandrashekar Reddy in June 2026.
The trial had been stalled since August following Kumar’s promotion. The case has progressed slowly in recent months, with only seven hearings held over the last four months. A prosecution source involved with the proceedings told The Indian Express that very few witnesses had been examined since June.
Lankesh, 55, was shot dead outside her Bengaluru home on September 5, 2017, after returning from work. The Special Investigation Team investigating the case alleged that Parashuram Waghmore was the shooter and Ganesh Miskin the motorcycle rider. The SIT linked the alleged conspiracy to former members of Sanatan Sanstha and its affiliate, the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti.
The Karnataka Police SIT filed a chargesheet against 17 people in November 2018. The trial began only on July 4, 2022, after a gap of nearly five years. Since then, the case has been transferred between judges, with S Amarannavar, Anil Katti, C M Joshi, Ramakrishna Huddar and B Muralidhar Pai later elevated to the Karnataka High Court.
To reduce the length of the proceedings, the prosecution dropped more than 250 of the 500 witnesses originally listed. More than 200 prosecution witnesses have been examined so far, while four have turned hostile. Between November 5 and June 1, 2026, 17 key witnesses gave evidence, including police officer Abhinav Khare and ballistic expert Kiran Kumar of the Karnataka Forensic Science Laboratory.
Kumar’s forensic evidence linked fired bullets and cartridges in the Lankesh case to weapons allegedly used in the killings of Kannada scholar M M Kalburgi, leftist thinker Govind Pansare and rationalist Narendra Dabholkar. Khare also testified about alleged confessions concerning the destruction of the weapon, the disposal of related material and weapons training camps.
The Supreme Court directed that the trial be expedited in August 2024 while dismissing separate petitions filed by the Karnataka government and Lankesh’s sister against bail granted to a key accused. The delay subsequently became a factor in bail decisions involving other accused persons.
The immediate next step is for Judge Hegde’s court to fix fresh dates and resume the examination of the remaining witnesses. All 17 accused are currently out on bail.
