From Bullet Trail to Bullet Train

On 5 September 2017, the bullet trail of the Hindutva forces devoured one more precious life. Personally speaking, this was my third loss of a comrade or friend—Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare and now, Gauri Lankesh. The man on the street, too, broadly knows who their killers are. However, even after four years of the first of these murders, the investigations have not made any significant progress. The special investigation team of the Maharashtra police had apprehended one Sameer Gaikwad, a sadhak of the Sanatan Sanstha, on 15 September 2015 for the murder of Pansare and filed a charge sheet against him on 14 December 2015. In Dabholkar’s case, the Central Bureau of Investigation, brought in on the directions of the Bombay High Court, had arrested one Virendra Tawde, an ear, nose and throat surgeon and a member of the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti (HJS), a splinter of the Sanatan Sanstha, in Pune in June 2016 on the charges of arranging weapons and logistics for the planned murder. Recently, on 17 June 2017, Gaikwad managed to get bail from the Kolhapur District and Sessions Court, which was rejected earlier by the same court as well as by the high court, and effectively demolished the hope of securing justice for these martyrs. His two accomplices, Vinay Pawar and Sarang Akolkar, both sanstha members are still at large. There is absolutely no forward movement in Kalburgi’s case whereas in Gauri’s, the Karnataka government, as though to cover up its inaction, held a state funeral for the slain journalist.

While the world is aghast at the impunity with which these murders are being committed, the Prime Minister does not feel it worth his while to so much as utter a word of concern. On the contrary, he follows the Hindutva bigots, who openly celebrated the killing of Gauri and abused her in the filthiest terms, on social media. Some of them are even rewarded with plum posts in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). As a matter of fact, there is, perhaps, nothing indecent or vulgar when it comes to the partisan behaviour of the Narendra Modi-led government. All the culprits of the Gujarat carnage and the accused in several acts of Hindu terror stand acquitted and on the contrary, those like Teesta Setalvad are harassed and the late Hemant Karkare maligned. As this bullet trail continues unhindered, pushing India into a dark abyss of bigotry and backwardness, Modi is on an ego trip over a bullet train to project India’s forwardness. What is common to both these seemingly dissimilar acts is the impunity and unscrupulousness of the current ruling dispensation.