As announced earlier, noted writer Chandrashekhar Patil, popularly known as Champa, on Monday returned the prestigious Pampa Award conferred on him by the Karnataka government in 2009, protesting against what he said was “an effort to stifle the voice of dissent and freedom of expression”. He returned the statue of Saraswati and Ganapati, and a cheque of Rs. 3 lakh to the Director, Kannada and Culture, K.A. Dayanand at the Kannada Bhavan here. Mr. Patil said returning the award was a symbolic gesture to protest the brutal murder of his friend and writer M.M. Kalburgi. “I am very much pained by the way my friend saw his end, and the gesture is a token of respect shown to him,” he said. Urging the Chief Minister to reopen the case of the murder of another of his writer friends, Linganna Satyampet, he said, the case has not seen a logical end even three years after the incident.
