The trial in journalist Gauri Lankesh’s murder case has been stalled since August and is now set to resume before its eighth judge, nearly nine years after she was shot outside her Bengaluru home. Ravindra Hegde, the newly appointed principal city civil and sessions judge in Bengaluru, held his first hearing in the case on Thursday to fix fresh dates for the proceedings.
Hegde took charge on October 5 after his predecessor, K S Bharath Kumar, was elevated to the Karnataka High Court. Kumar had taken over the case from M Chandrashekar Reddy in June 2026, making Hegde the second judge to assume responsibility for the trial this year.
The proceedings have moved slowly in recent months. The case had only seven hearings in the last four months, while few witnesses were examined since June, according to a prosecution source involved with the trial. All 17 accused are currently out on bail.
Lankesh, 55, was shot dead at the doorstep of her Bengaluru residence on September 5, 2017, after returning from work. The Special Investigation Team probing the case identified Parashuram Waghmore as the alleged shooter and Ganesh Miskin as the alleged motorcycle rider. The two men were accused of being linked to right-wing groups.
The Karnataka Police SIT filed a chargesheet against 17 people in November 2018. The trial began on July 4, 2022, after a prolonged investigation and legal proceedings. Judges S Amarannavar, Anil Katti, C M Joshi, Ramakrishna Huddar and B Muralidhar Pai handled the matter at different stages before being elevated to the High Court. A previous schedule had provided for one week of continuous hearings every month to accelerate the trial.
The prosecution later dropped more than 250 of the approximately 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, the court heard 17 key witnesses, including police officer Abhinav Khare and ballistic expert Kiran Kumar from the Karnataka Forensic Science Laboratory.
Khare told the court that accused linked to the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti had allegedly described the destruction of the firearm used in the murder and the disposal of related material. Kumar’s evidence concerned forensic links between bullets and cartridges recovered in the Lankesh case and those used in the killings of Kannada scholar M M Kalburgi, leftist thinker Govind Pansare and rationalist Narendra Dabholkar.
In August 2024, the Supreme Court dismissed separate petitions by the Karnataka government and Lankesh’s sister seeking cancellation of bail granted to a key accused alleged to have provided logistical support. The Supreme Court also directed that the trial be expedited. Subsequent bail orders for other accused by the Karnataka High Court and the trial court cited the delay in proceedings. The newly appointed trial judge is expected to announce the next hearing dates as the case resumes.
