Kavitha Lankesh, the younger sister of slain activist-journalist Gauri Lankesh, still remembers the night she was killed in vivid detail.

“I got a call from my mother saying Gauri has fallen down, go see what’s happened. I reversed the car, there was a kind of fear, about her health, if she had low blood pressure or if it was a heart attack. Or maybe something minor, like she’s stumbled and fallen and got hurt, lot of speculations were running through my mind. But when I was near her house, a TV news anchor called me and said, “Madam there's been a shooting, I believe".

Kavitha wanted to believe it was an attempt to scare Gauri or she only got shot on her leg. But when she reached Gauri’s house, she was told it was all over. “By the time I reached, the police were already there. They told me she was gone. I really collapsed, I couldn’t believe it could come to this,” she said.