A journalist with a Kannada daily is returning the Madhyama Academy award in protest against the delay in apprehending the assailants of writer MM Kalburgi.

Principal Correspondent with Kannada Prabha newspaper Chikkappanahalli Shanmukha, said in a Facebook poston Tuesday that he would return the award on Friday. He said that he was unable to return the award immediately as he was visiting his native village in Chitradurga district while the award and citation were in Bagalkot district where he works.

Shanmukha received the award and a cheque of Rs 10,000 in 2006 for his contribution to journalism from the state government.

Stating that it was his "moral responsibility", the scribe alleged that the state police were aware of the threat to MM Kalburgi’s life and yet security was withdrawn. “But this does not mean that the intelligence remains a mute spectator. I am opposed to the complete failure of the government in this regard,” he wrote in the Facebook post.

Scholar and rationalist Kalburgi was killed on August 30 by unidentified gunmen at his residence in Dharwad in northern Karnataka.

Shanmukha is the first journalist to have returned an award given by the government over Kalburgi’s murder. So far, several writers across the country and writing in different langauges have protested Kalburgi’s murder and other instances of intolerance and violence that have recently occurred.

Recently Vice President of the Sahitya Akademi Chandrashekar Kambar said that the Siddaramaiah government wasn't to be blamed for the murder.