Gauri to posthumously get Anna Politkovskaya Award

Bengaluru: Senior journalist, activist Gauri Lankesh, who was gunned down outside her home on September 5 in Bengaluru, will be posthumously given the Anna Politkovskaya Award this year, making her the first Indian to receive this honour, her family said on Thursday.

Lankesh will share the annual award, instituted in memory of a Russian investigative reporter who was assassinated last year in Moscow, with Pakistani activist Gulalai Ismail.

Ismail is fighting rightwing extremism in Pakistan.

The award is conferred by London-based organisation RAW in WAR (Reach All Women in War), and the announcement about Lankesh winning it was made to the media in Bengaluru by her mother Indira, brother Indrajit and sister Kavitha Lankesh.

“A senior Indian journalist and activist Gauri, just like Anna Politkovskaya before her, was shot dead outside her home in Bangalore on September 5, 2017, in order to silence her voice and her critical reporting and activism,” RAW in WAR wrote on their website.

Journalist Anna Politkovskaya was killed on October 7, 2006, at her home in Moscow for her investigative reports on state corruption and rights abuses. London-based RAW in WAR established the award to honour the Russian journalist.