11, Jan 2016

Dayananda, who also makes films, had won the award for his debut work Raste Nakshatra. The awards were given away on Saturday.
By: Express News Service
New Delhi Published:Jan 11, 2016, 2:52
A YOUNG Kannada writer, Dayananda T K, has refused to accept the Kannada Sahitya Akademi Award, citing the failure of the Karnataka government to arrest the killers of Sahitya Akademi award winner M M Kalburgi, who was shot dead in August last year.
Dayananda, who also makes films, had won the award for his debut work Raste Nakshatra. The awards were given away on Saturday.
In a letter to the Kannada Sahitya Akademi on Friday, Dayananda, who is in his 30s, cited “intolerance, which is rising by the day” in the country, and said it was impossible “to remain silent in such troubled times”.
“It has been four months since the unjust murder of our own intellectual M M Kalburgi and yet there is no sign of even the minimum progress in the investigation so far. When the whole world has responded to the murder of Kalburgi, who was pro-people, it is shocking that there has neither been any major development in the case nor have investigators found any major clues in solving the case,” he said.