Economic
Times: New Delhi: Wednesday, 22 July 2015.
The Union
Home Ministry has started collecting data related to attacks on mediapersons,
RTI activists and whistleblowers in the background of a series of assaults on
them in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh recently.
The
collection of data is being done by National Crime Records Bureau based here
which has introduced three new categories attack on mediapersons, attack on
whistleblowers and attack on RTI activists in its form circulated to police
stations across the country this year.
There was no
centralised data on attacks of RTI activists, whistleblowers and journalists as
investigation of cases were handled by state police and there was also no
clarity on definition of these three categories.
NCRB will be
collecting the data under the heading of grievous hurt of varying degrees which
are being registered under relevant sections of IPC.
"If an
RTI activist/social activist, mediaperson or whistleblower is murdered (Heavens
forbid!), then that case is counted under the Crime Head- Murder (Section 302)
"....the
larger category of 'murders' ....gives no breakups regarding the identity of
victims," Venkatesh Nayak of Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, which
also collects crime data, said citing difficulties in the new template.
The data is
published every year by NCRB in the form of its reports.
"That
the government has woken up to the cruel reality of attacks on citizens who
speak the truth and demand their right to know the truth about public affairs
is very welcome.
Until now,
the only source where information about attacks on RTI activists was the
dedicated Wikipedia page," he said.
Citing Vyapam
scam deaths, Nayak said while a citizen who blows the whistle on wrongdoing in
government may file a complaint about a resultant attack, an internal
whistleblower, namely an employee of a government office, may not be able to
get a complaint registered by the police without adequate support from
sympathisers or influential people.
"Indeed
we do not have enough data on how many internal whistleblowers have made
complaints about attacks on them to the police till date," he said.