Gauri Lankesh was a prominent activist and a Journalist who was shot dead at her doorstep in the city of Bangalore on 5th September by an an unidentified gunman when she was returning home from the office. Gauri 55, was found lying in a pool of blood with shots in her head and chest.
Gauri Lankesh was the editor of Gauri Lankesh Patrike, a Kannada weekly. She was widely regarded as an independent and outspoken journalist and activist, and a fierce critic of hardline Hindu groups in Karnataka. From the past few year she was very vocal about  the caste system, freedom of the press and was a staunch critic of the right-wing Hindutva politics.
She strongly surfaced media with her statements of  “Hinduism was not a religion but a system of hierarchy in society in which women are treated as second-class creatures”.
She endorsed a minority religion tag for the Lingayat community and headed the Komu Souharda Vedike, a communal harmony platform for the oppressed communities. She was also of the view that the followers of philosopher Basavanna were not Hindus
Her killing follows several assassinations of outspoken secularists or rationalists in recent years, including scholar Malleshappa Kalburgi, anti-superstition activist Narendra Dabholkar, and author-politician Govind Pansare.
The Committee to Protect Journalists has said that there have been no convictions in any of the 27 cases of journalists murdered for their work in India since 1992. In 2016, the organization urged the central government to bring together journalists, scholars and experts on freedom of expression to submit draft proposals for a national-level journalist safety and protection mechanism.
