Arrest culprits behind Lankesh murder quickly: BJP

New Delhi :  The BJP today asked the Karnataka government to swiftly probe the murder of journalist Gauri Lankesh in Bengaluru and arrest the guilty. Union minister Ananth Kumar targeted Chief Minister Siddaramaiah for what he said was the poor law and order situation in the Congress-led state.

He said there had been 18-19 political murders, including that of rationalist M M Kalburgi, in the state in the last last two and a half years. “Senior journalist of Karnataka Gauri Lankesh has been murdered mercilessly. We strongly condemn this heinous murder. We request the state government and Chief Minister Siddaramaiah to do a swift probe, arrest the guilty quickly and punish them severely,” Kumar, a Lok Sabha member from Bengaluru, told reporters.

He said the Siddaramaiah government had not succeeded in taking the murder investigations to their logical conclusions. The Supreme Court, he added, had yesterday handed over the probe into the mysterious death of DSP Ganapathy to the CBI while questioning the state government’s investigation. Kumar declined to answer a question on whether the BJP wanted a CBI probe.

Lankesh, 55, a vocal critic of Hindutva politics, was shot dead by unidentified assailants at her residence yesterday.