Eight Years On, The Bullets Are Still Stirring In Gauri Lankesh's Absence 

In the age of false news, the lines between truth and lies are blurred, and those who question power are the first to be silenced.”

Those were among the last words Gauri Lankesh wrote in a half-finished editorial lying in her handbag on the night of September 5, 2017, when four bullets ended her life at the gate of her Bengaluru home. She was 55, returning from work, when she collapsed on the stone pathway she had walked for years.

Eight years later, the sound of those gunshots still carries. Each September, her absence is marked with candlelight gatherings and memorial lectures. Her presence endures in the pages of Gauri Lankesh Patrike, in the voices of the young reporters she mentored, and in the continued insistence on asking questions that unsettle power.

The daughter of P. Lankesh, poet, playwright and founder of Lankesh Patrike, she grew up in an atmosphere where language was an instrument of resistance. She began her career at The Times of India. After her father died in 2000, she briefly shared editorship of Lankesh Patrike with her brother before disputes over editorial direction led her to strike out on her own. In 2005, she founded Gauri Lankesh Patrike, a weekly funded by subscriptions and donations, free from commercial or political ties. It became her platform to report on communal mobilisation, caste violence, corruption and the narrowing space for dissent.

Her work carried a cost. She supported Karnataka’s efforts to rehabilitate Naxal cadres, often meeting them herself. She faced multiple defamation cases, including convictions in 2008 brought by political leaders. She lived under constant threats, both online and on the street. Still, she continued to publish, week after week.

Her killing formed part of a broader pattern. The murders of Narendra Dabholkar in 2013, Govind Pansare in 2015 and M.M. Kalburgi in 2015 had already revealed the risks of confronting entrenched orthodoxies. Forensic reports later showed that the same weapons linked those assassinations to Lankesh’s. The Special Investigation Team eventually charged more than a dozen men associated with right-wing groups. The trial began in 2021, and by 2025, it was still moving slowly, with each witness adding to the long search for closure.

Lankesh’s unfinished editorial was rooted in years of experience as both journalist and target. Her newspaper, funded only by readers, reported consistently on corruption, illegal mining, caste violence and the growth of Hindu nationalist networks. She faced multiple defamation suits and relentless online harassment. Trolls branded her “anti-Hindu” and circulated edited clips of her speeches, one of which was later shown repeatedly to her alleged killers as justification for her murder.

The rise of organised digital propaganda had already become part of India’s political life. Analysts describe party “IT cells” operating as pyramids: leaders at the top, influencers in the middle, and anonymous online volunteers at the base, tasked with pushing narratives and discrediting dissenters. For journalists like Lankesh, this meant constant abuse, doctored images and coordinated campaigns that blurred the line between political debate and targeted harassment.

Postcard News, one of the websites she singled out, grew into a key hub for viral disinformation. Its founder, Mahesh Vikram Hegde, cultivated close ties with political figures and later co-founded a public relations firm offering digital media management and political communication. Despite lawsuits and police complaints, his influence continued to expand, reflecting how disinformation had become both a political tool and a commercial enterprise.

For those close to her, the loss was deeply personal. Journalist Rana Ayyub recalled how, just three days before the shooting, Lankesh had written on her Facebook wall during a surge of online abuse: “Don’t worry. These people won’t do anything.” Ayyub later said: “True tribute is not in lighting candles once we are gone, but in standing by journalists while they are alive. Gauri was a warning.”

Her death sparked a wave of protest. Demonstrators carried placards reading “I am also Gauri.” International organisations, including Reporters Without Borders and Amnesty International, cited her assassination as evidence of the erosion of press freedom in India. UNESCO posthumously awarded her the Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize in 2018. The Gauri Lankesh Memorial Trust was established to sustain her legacy of promoting communal harmony and freedom of expression.

Those who knew her best resisted attempts to sanctify her. 

Chidanand Rajghatta, her ex-husband, had written then, “If Gauri read all the tributes about soul and afterlife, she would have cracked a good laugh. Maybe not a laugh, but at least a chuckle. We had decided in our teens that heaven and hell were a lot of b.s. There was enough heaven and hell on earth, and we should just leave god alone; he has enough on his hands, instead of begging him for favours.”

What remains, more than tributes, is her warning. In her unfinished editorial, she wrote of false news and propaganda undermining democracy. Eight years later, the boundaries between fact and fabrication are less specific, her words more immediate than ever.

Gauri Lankesh is gone, but her voice is not. It continues in the questions she asked, in the record she left, and in the knowledge that silence is also a decision