Bangalore: The head of a radical Hindu outfit, one of whose alleged activists is suspected to have killed Gauri Lankesh, has apparently compared the senior journalist's murder to the death of a dog, reviving memories of similar remarks by Narendra Modi and Union minister V.K. Singh.
Sri Rama Sene chief Pramod Muthalik, castigating those who had questioned Modi's silence on Gauri's murder, said here on Sunday night that the Prime Minister needn't comment after "every dog dies".
" Arre, what does Modi have to do with the murder of Gauri? Does Modi have to answer if every dog dies in Karnataka?" he told an event organised by the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti, drawing cheers.
The comment carried shades of junior foreign minister V.K. Singh's 2015 remark dismissing criticism of the government after two Dalit children were burnt alive in Haryana. He had said: "If someone throws stones at a dog, the government is not responsible."
Modi, as Gujarat chief minister in 2013, had triggered controversy by appearing to draw a parallel between the 2002 riot victims and slain puppies as he tried to convey his "pain" for those killed in the violence.
"If... someone else is driving a car and we're sitting behind, even then if a puppy comes under the wheel, will it be painful or not?" he was quoted as saying.
The Sene chief had recently been sucked into the Gauri murder controversy when a picture emerged of him with his arm round Parashuram Wagmare, whom the investigators recently declared as the possible killer.
Muthalik had denied any link between the Sene and Wagmare, saying he posed for pictures with hundreds of people he didn't know.
But Rakesh Math, a Bijapur-based Sene official summoned for questioning on Gauri's murder, on Saturday told reporters that Wagmare was a Sene activist.
Chief minister H.D. Kumaraswamy, who is in Delhi, has condemned Muthalik's remarks, media reports said. State medical education minister D.K. Shivakumar said the remarks were "indecent".
Shiv Sundar, columnist and a close friend of Gauri, said the Sene was on the "offensive" because Wagmare had been linked to the murder.
Muthalik further alleged at the event: "The investigation into Gauri's killing was led astray from the beginning. The Congress was in power when all four murders were committed - two in Maharashtra and two in Karnataka."
He added: "But the intellectuals did not utter a word about the murders taking place during Congress rule. (They asked) 'Why is Modi silent? He is not talking about the killers of Gauri'."
Muthalik was clearly alluding to the murders of rationalists Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare in Maharashtra and M.M. Kalburgi and Gauri in Karnataka. However, Pansare was killed in Kolhapur in February 2015, nearly four months after the BJP had come to power in Maharashtra.
Ballistic tests have suggested the same pistol was used to murder Gauri in Bangalore last September, Kalburgi in Dharwad in August 2015, and Pansare, police say.
The Samiti, which had organised the event where Muthalik spoke, is considered close to the Goa-based Sanatan Sanstha, which had come under the scanner after Dabholkar's 2013 murder in Pune.
The Sene had attained notoriety by attacking pub-goers in the coastal city of Mangalore in 2009.
Images of young women being dragged out and thrashed led to the arrest of several Sene workers, including Muthalik. They were all acquitted last March after none of the victims came forward to give statements.
