Pathak, a resident editor of Sandesh newspaper in Baroda, was stabbed to death by a group of assailants while entering the newspaper’s office. About six months earlier, during the November Navratri festival in Gujarat, Raju Risaldar, chief of Shiv Sena, a Hindu nationalist political organization, publicly threatened to kill Pathak. Pathak had written articles criticizing the Hindu nationalist party. After Pathak’s murder, Risaldar was killed during a scuffle with police.