AGENCIES|PANAJI

The Goa Congress today appealed to the BJP-led state government to ban “Sanatani” (orthodox) organisations, which it said will “prevent killings” of progressive writers and thinkers in future.

Goa Congress unit president Girish Chodankar also referred to arrests of right wing activists from Maharashtra and Karnataka in connection with the killings of rationalists Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare and journalist Gauri Lankesh.

Dabholkar was shot dead in Pune in 2013, Pansare in Kolhapur in 2015 (He died in Mumbai), and Lankesh in Bengaluru in 2017.

The agencies are also investigating if Hindutva activists were involved in the killing of writer and scholar M M Kalburgi in Karnataka in 2015.

“It is noticed that the investigating agencies are increasingly arresting the people associated with propagators of Sanatani organisations for killing progressive thinkers and writers,” Chodankar told reporters in Panaji in Goa.

The CBI and other investigating agencies in Maharashtra and Karnataka have arrested a number of right wing activists in connection with the killings of Dabholkar, Pansare and Lankesh.

The Maharashtra ATS recently arrested three right wing activists from various parts of the state and seized crude bombs and firearms from their possession.

The ATS suspected that the trio were planning to launch terror attacks in various parts of the state.

The agencies are also investigating whether the arrested persons are anyway linked to Goa-based Sanatan Sanstha, a controversial radical Hindutva outfit.

“It is high time that the Goa government ban all such organisations in the coastal state to prevent any further killings of progressive thinkers and writers,” he said.

Chodankar said Damodar Mauzo, a prominent writer from Goa, was also facing threat to his life.

The Goa Police had provided security to Mauzo (73) in July this year following intelligence inputs from the SIT probing the killing of Lankesh that the writer is facing threat to his life.

Chodankar said growth of such Sanatani organisations is dangerous for secular, liberal and progressive Goa.