A prosecution witness in the Gauri Lankesh murder trial who had given detailed statements to a magistrate about his participation in multiple arms training camps conducted by a right-wing Hindutva syndicate implicated in the crime turned hostile on Wednesday.
The 37-year-old prosecution witness, who is involved in grassroot politics in Karnataka’s Belagavi region, was declared hostile by the state special public prosecutor after he denied all the statements he had made in September 2018 under section 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
The witness, who had identified several people arrested for the September 5, 2017, murder of the journalist as participants in the training camps, also rejected the test identification parade he had participated in at the Bengaluru prison in November 2018 and claimed that he had identified the accused persons under police duress, prosecution sources said.
During a cross-examination in the court after being declared hostile by the prosecution, the witness denied the charge that he was deviating from his earlier statements due to pressure from the accused–most of whom were granted bail last year.
A chargesheet filed by a Special Investigation Team of the Karnataka police, which investigated the shooting of the 55-year-old journalist outside her home in Bengaluru, has statements by several accused people and witnesses regarding training camps where coaching was also provided in the use of arms and explosives.
This story was originally published in indianexpress.com. Read the full story here.
