Ravish Kumar

:: Just a few hours before her murder in Bangalore on Tuesday, allegedly by Hindu right-wingers, Gauri Lankesh, a secular journalist and civil rights activist, spoke up for the rights of Rohingya Muslims in India.

“Are Rohingiya ‘terrorists’ killing Hindus and burning their homes and temples?” she tweeted, citing an article in Quint news magazine about fake news being used to incite anger against the minority in India.

“She took a strong line against the deportation of Rohingya from India and their genocide in Myanmar,” said Kavita Krishnan, a prominent civil rights activist and secretary of the All India Progressive Women’s Association. Lankesh’s killing “is an attempt to strike terror in the heart of dissent,” Krishnan added.

Lankesh, 55, was found lying in a pool of blood on her doorstep in the city of Bangalore. She was returning home from work when she was gunned down by three men who came on a motorcycle in the early evening in front of her home in Bangalore.

She was an editor of Gauri Lankesh Patrike, a popular weekly magazine in the local Kannada language.

Her killing has sparked outrage across India, with civil rights activists, journalists and others taking to the streets in protest. But the government has remained largely silent.

MP Smriti Irani tweeted a condolence message, but “such tweets are meaningless,” said Krishnan.

“There are Twitter handles followed by (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi that are busy celebrating Lankesh’s death.”

When contacted by News Agency, many members of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) refused to comment.

When asked about Lankesh’s opposition to deporting Rohingya, Rakesh Sinha, director of the India Policy Foundation — a think tank promoted by the BJP — simply said: “It’s not good to go into specifics.”

The BJP’s ambivalence about the killing of a prominent voice of dissent has not gone down well with opposition leaders.

Krishnan said “a strong section of media in India” is also “responsible for creating an atmosphere where any political dissent is termed anti-national.”

Modi landed in Myanmar for talks with its leader Aung San Suu Kyi on the same day Lankesh was killed.