Whistleblowers at receiving end after using RTI

The Hindu : Meena Menon MUMBAI, June 7, 2010

While Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan is proud that the State has an impressive 98.69 per cent disposal rate of requests under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, the murder of two campaigners who used the law to good effect is a blot.

First, it was Satish Shetty at Talegaon, near Pune, who was killed on January 13, and more recently Dattatray Patil at Ichalkaranji, in Kolhapur district, on May 22. The two events triggered widespread condemnation and protests and instilled apprehension among RTI campaigners in the State. The Bombay High Court took suo motu notice of the Shetty case and the State government consented to a CBI investigation in April.

The land mafia and some prominent builders were Shetty's target. Shetty, as the High Court says, brought out “dubious transactions of sale of land.” In each case, while some six people were arrested, relatives and supporters are dismayed at the police investigation. Shetty's brother Sandeep is upset that things are not moving after the government agreed to the CBI probe. In fact it was submitted in the High Court that Shetty had named in his application the persons from whom he received threats and sought protection. This has not at all been investigated by the police. The court on May 7 ordered the State government to immediately provide police protection to any person or organisation that complains of threat of use of force or has been attacked. It was asked to set up a special committee to identify social activists and whistleblowers. The court gave the State 90 days to set up provisions for speedy investigation of cases of threats or attacks against social activists, a monitoring system and a database of social activists.

While Shetty is a long time activist and is associated with the anti-corruption movement headed by social worker Anna Hazare, little is known about Patil, though his targets were the powers that be in Kolhapur. In Patil's case, his brother Prabhakar has filed a supplementary complaint on May 30 saying it was a case of murder for political reasons and has demanded an investigation on those lines. RTI activist Shivaji Raut, based in Satara, says now the police will have to investigate the entire matter and not just the murder. A copy of some the RTI documents obtained by Patil as well as the public interest litigation (PIL) he filed in the Bombay High Court in March 2010 are revealing. Patil filed the PIL against Jaywantrao Awale, Congress MP from Latur, and his two sons who, along with Ramchandra Lokhande, are directors of the Ambai Backward Class Agri Produce Processing Cooperative Society, Ichalkaranji, and others. He alleged various malpractices and the siphoning off of public funds to the tune of Rs 7.80 crores from the government.

Before filing the petition, Patil met several senior government officials and brought to their notice large-scale misappropriation after which the director of the social welfare department promised an investigation and a complete report by February. Fed up with a lack of response despite giving concrete instances of malpractices and fraud, Patil filed the PIL. When Mr. Awale was Social Justice Minister he got the name of the Ambai Society changed to Ambai Backward Class Agri Produce Processing Cooperative Society to avail of the special facilities which are granted to such societies in the form of loans, financial assistance and land. At the end of the PIL, Patil said he feared Mr. Awale would try to harm him and he apprehended danger to his life. He asked for police protection.

He wrote in detail to the Chief Minister on December 15, 2009 highlighting the corruption in institutions meant to uplift the scheduled castes and the backward classes. Of the 220 scheduled caste (SC) cooperative societies in the State, at least 100 were in Kolhapur district.

He alleged Mr. Awale and another former Social Justice Minister, Chandrakant Handore, were involved in permitting these corrupt societies. Fake societies were set up with bogus members and false signatures to grab funds meant for the backward classes, he claimed.

Before that, in August 2009, Patil wrote to the police fearing for his life after filing a complaint of corruption against local councillors. He managed to get the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) to investigate corruption charges against 56 councillors from the Ichalkaranji Municipal Council for fraud and accepting favours for voting for a particular party during the elections to the president of the council. .

The murders of the RTI activists have assumed grave dimensions.

The state, by passing the RTI Act, is allowing citizens to use information as a weapon. But it is falling short in bringing the real culprits to book or giving protection, undermining its own commitment to truth.