Indian Express: Jaipur: Saturday, June 17, 2017.
It was
January 1998 eight years since the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan was set up,
four years since its first public hearing, and three months after the then
Bhairon Singh Shekhawat-led Rajasthan government passed an order allowing the
general public to seek information related to rural works and public welfare
schemes.Under that order, the first request for information from a public
official was made by the MKSS.
Between
February and April 1998, leaders and members of MKSS say they visited the
offices of panchayat, panchayat samiti, zila parishad and district collector 73
times to seek information regarding government works from Kishangarh’s Harmara
village panchayat, then led by sarpanch Pyare Lal Tank.
The MKSS had
got complaints against Pyare Lal over money meant for, but not spent on,
construction of toilets, houses under Indira Awaas Yojana, and wages for
development works such as those under Jawahar Rozgar Yojana that had not been
paid.
Nineteen
years on, the activists are still entangled: a court in Ajmer’s Kishangarh
Ajmer on Tuesday sentenced MKSS’s Nikhil Dey and four others to four months’
imprisonment. On February 6, 1998, they took an application to Pyare Lal’s
office but he allegedly refused to receive it. On February 27, they submitted
the application with the local development officer. Finally, on April 23, 1998,
the development officer wrote to the sarpanch directing him to release the
information.
With the
letter though the government order would
have been sufficient Dey, Norti Bai, Ram Karan, Babulal and Chhotu Lal, all
either associated with Rajasthan Mazdoor Kisan Morcha (RMKM) or MKSS, went to
Pyare Lal’s office. As he wasn’t there, they went to his home on May 6.
Once there,
the activists allege that the sarpanch and his family assaulted and abused them
when they sought information from Pyare Lal, while the sarpanch’s family
alleges that they were the ones assaulted by the activists. “We were punched
and kicked around by Pyare Lal and his family. His brother Om Prakash filed the
FIR and claimed that Pyare Lal was not there even though he was very much
there,” Dey told The Indian Express. Dey, who championed RTI and other civil
causes along with Aruna Roy and others, said, “We never lifted a finger and if
this can happen to us then it also speaks about other cases.”
“I and my
brother Pyare Lal look quite similar so they thought I was Pyare and started
questioning me, while Pyare was away. They threatened me and when I protested,
they misbehaved with me. They pushed my mother Kesar Bai and when my
handicapped niece Manisha came, they also shoved her and she fell,” said Om
Prakash, now 50, the younger brother of Pyare Lal. “I wasn’t home then,” says
Pyare Lal, 69, now bedridden, having suffered paralysis about seven years ago.
“We wouldn’t
have filed a case against them but Norti Bai, being a Dalit, filed a case against
us under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. So we filed a case against
them,” Prakash said. Norti would later become the sarpanch. Says Aruna Roy:
“Norti and Pyare Lal are neighbours. She gained prominence when she demanded
equal pay for men and women in 1981 and later when she opposed the practice of
Sati; she represented India at the United Nations. So Pyare Lal has always had
this animosity towards her, especially after she and others tried to highlight
his corruption. We’re all shocked that the real culprits got away and the
social activists were convicted in a superficial case.”
Police filed
a final report in Prakash’s case against Dey, Norti and others in June 1998,
yet Prakash filed a “protest petition” and had the case reopened in May 2001.
As for Norti’s complaint, “the police filed a final report as they couldn’t
find any evidence to back her claims,” Prakash said.
Rajasthan’s
Additional Director General, Law and Order, N Ravindra Kumar Reddy, who was
posted as Ajmer SP then, said, “I had asked the SHO for an impartial inquiry in
the case; it was simple case, they had gone to meet the sarpanch for a legal
purpose. But both cases were closed since the SHO must have found that no case
was made out. However, the complainant (Om Prakash) later said a case is indeed
made out and filed a review petition.”
Over the
years, the prosecution brought one witness after another “Brajmohan, Durga
Prasad, Om Prakash, Banna Ram, Manisha, Mahaveer, Rajendra and Polu” to back
their claim of assault. “I told the activists Pyare Lal wasn’t home, but the
five shoved me and Dey punched my nose. Chhotu tried to pull my mother’s
clothes. It is a densely populated area and others heard it. All this went on
for 5-7 minutes,” Prakash claimed in the court.
His niece Manisha
said “the man from Delhi hit my uncle on his nose and also manhandled my
grandmother Kesar Devi.” Manisha claimed that she did not get a medical check
done as she didn’t receive any serious injuries. The defendants said a false
case had been lodged against them as they were looking into allegations of
corruption against the sarpanch. But the court said the defendants were unable
to establish a clinical defence of their role. The defence lawyer said the
witnesses were from one family but the court said this was inaccurate. The
defence also questioned the lack of a doctor’s testimony but the court observed
that a lack of doctor’s testimony didn’t rule out an assault.
The sentence
has been suspended pending an appeal by the activists.
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