Goa Police deployed personnel to protect Sahitya Akademi award winner Damodar Mauzo after the alleged killers of journalist-activist Gauri Lankesh revealed a conspiracy to kill him, PTI reported on Thursday. The Special Investigation Team of Karnataka Police probing Lankesh’s murder received intelligence inputs about a threat to his life, PTI.

Mauzo is a Konkani novelist, critic, and scriptwriter in Konkani. The writer said that he did not want the security cover. “Personally, I have never received any threat,” Mauzo told PTI. “I came to know about it from the police department.”

“The cover will continue till a further review of the threat perception,” said an unidentified Goa Police Security Branch official.

The 73-year-old writer said he would keep writing and not change his views, reported The Indian Express. “I have been very, very outspoken against the Sanathan Sanstha,” said Mauzo. “I was told by the police that the threat is from a right-wing group.”

The writer had chaired a seminar at Dandi, Gujarat, in January 2016, where he said he was proud of being in Goa as it stood for harmony. Mauzo said he was equally ashamed of the Goa as it was the headquarters of Sanathan Santha, a right-wing organisation that has been accused of involvement in the murders of rationalists Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare. At the 2016 seminar, Pansare’s daughter-in-law Megha and Dabholkar’s son Hamid were on the panel chaired by Mauzo.

“My freedom is not curbed and it never will,” said Mauzo, who won the Sahitya Akademi award in 1983 for this novel Karmelin. “My writings are proof... I am not going to stop speaking or change my opinions against them.”

The Special Investigation Team in the Gauri Lankesh case has made 11 arrests so far.

Dabholkar was shot dead in Pune on August 2013 when he was out on a morning walk. Pansare and his wife were shot at five times in February 2015 and he later died in hospital. Another rationalist, MM Kalburgi, was gunned down in August 2015 at his home in Karnataka’s Dharwad.