An accused in the 2017 murder of senior journalist Gauri Lankesh is contesting the January 15 Jalna Municipal Corporation elections in Maharashtra as an independent candidate.
The accused, Shrikant Pangarkar, has filed his nomination from Ward 13, where he faces candidates from the BJP and several smaller parties. The Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena has not yet fielded a contender in this ward.
Shrikant briefly joined the Shiv Sena ahead of the November 2024 Assembly elections, but the party kept his induction on hold after public backlash.
Gauri was murdered on September 5, 2017, by a team of 18 Hindutva loyalists led by engineer-turned-murderer Amol Kale. She was shot dead outside her home in Bengaluru’s Rajarajeshwari Nagar.
Shrikant was charged in 2021 alongside Amol (prime accused), Amit Degwekar, Sujith Kumar, Ganesh Miskin, Amith Badd, Bharath Kurane, Suresh HL, Rajesh Bangera, Sudhanva Gondalekar, Sharad Kalaskar, Mohan Nayak, Vasudev Suryavamshi, Manohara Edave, Naveen Kumar, and Rushikesh Deodikar.
A former Jalna Municipal Council member from the undivided Shiv Sena (2001–06), Shrikant later joined the right-wing Hindu Janajagruti Samiti after being denied a party ticket in 2011.
TNM had previously reported in a three-part series how Amol Kale, an engineer who became radicalised by Sanatan Sanstha’s literature, allegedly hatched the conspiracy to murder Gauri. Sanatan Sanstha is a Goa-based extremist Hindutva organisation.
Amol planned Gauri’s murder and put together the team of 18 people who executed it.
Read the first story in the three-part series: Why Gauri Lankesh was assassinated: The story of an indoctrinated engineer