55-years old Gauri Lankesh, a veteran Indian journalist known for her outspoken criticism of Hindu nationalist politics has been shot dead outside her home in Bangalore.
Police who recovered her body onTuesday night said she had been killed by unknown gunmen on a motorcycle. Her body was reportedly found lying in a pool of blood near the door of her house.
Until her death, Lankesh was the editor of left-wing independent newspaper Lankesh Patrike, founded by her late father.
Activists say journalists are being increasingly targeted by radical Hindu nationalists and her death is the latest in a string of assassinations targeting journalists and secularists critical of extreme Hindu nationalism and religious superstition in India.
In 2015, scholar Malleshappa M. Kalburgi was shot dead at his home in Bangalore and earlier that same year politician and writer Govind Pansare was killed too.
According to Karnataka state's chief minister Siddaramaiah, 'there cannot be any personal reasons attributed to her death because she had no personal enemies. So, the possibility is only political'.
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