Bengaluru: Karnataka Home Minister Priyank Kharge has accused people from the “Sangh” of murdering four rationalists—including Gauri Lankesh in Bengaluru—across two states, and declared that he will soon put them behind bars.
“Sangh wale ne hee mara unko (people of the Sangh killed them). Case chal raha (The case is going on). Another six months I will finish it (and) I will put all these people in jail,” Kharge said Sunday evening, referring to the murders of Communist Party of India (CPI) leader Govind Pansare, journalist Gauri Lankesh, Kannada scholar M.M. Kalburgi and rationalist Narendra Dabholkar. He was speaking at the Indian Union Muslim League’s (IUML’s) Muslim Youth League State Conference Rally in Kochi Sunday evening.
“(I) spoke about the BJP’s politics of hate and division and urged young people to study the RSS’s history to understand what the organisation truly stands for. Its absence from the Quit India Movement, opposition to the Tricolour and historical hostility towards the Constitution reveal a past that every young Indian should know,” he further said in an X post.
On 20 August 2013, anti-superstition activist Narendra Dabholkar, founder of the Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti (MANS) was shot dead while he was out on his morning walk in Pune.
The Dabholkar killing was followed by the assassinations of Pansare on 16 February 2015 in Maharashtra’s Kolhapur, and Kalburgi on 30 August 2015 in Dharwad, Karnataka.
It was a pleasure to attend the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML)’s Muslim Youth League State Rally in Kochi last evening and interact with Kerala’s energetic youth.
Spoke about the BJP’s politics of hate and division and urged young people to study the RSS’s history to… pic.twitter.com/pMhP2MurDL
— Priyank Kharge / ಪ್ರಿಯಾಂಕ್ ಖರ್ಗೆ (@PriyankKharge) November 9, 2026
On 5 September 2017, journalist Gauri Lankesh was shot dead by two motorcycle-borne assailants outside her home in Bengaluru.
Three of the cases are still at the trial stage, barring the Dabholkar case where a court delivered a verdict. In August this year, suspending the sentence of life imprisonment delivered by a special court, the Bombay High Court granted bail to Sachin Andure, convicted in the Dabholkar murder case. Andure, who was also facing trial in connection with the Pansare murder, secured bail in both cases.
Priyank Kharge, a vocal critic of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), followed up his comments by alleging that the people behind the murders were also linked to the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.
Kharge’s tirade follows his continued attacks against the RSS and its affiliates, demanding that they register themselves and reveal their source of funding.
Kharge and the Sangh have traded charges frequently, both accusing the other of impropriety.
The Karnataka Home Minister’s stand on the RSS follows the one taken by Congress leaders like Rahul Gandhi, Mallikarjun Kharge and the state unit president, B.K. Hariprasad.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)