HERE.
NOW: Bhubaneswar: Saturday, 06 February 2016.
More than
five months after an RTI activist was attacked in the city allegedly for
exposing corruption in Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC), investigations
by the commissionerate police have made no headway and no arrest has been made
so far.
The RTI
activist, Binayak Rath, a retired government employee who has been using RTI
extensively to expose corruption in BMC since 2008, was attacked at BMC office
August 27, 2015. Badagada police registered a case (214/15) in this regard the
same day under Sections 341, 325, 307, 506, 34 of IPC.
Rath’s
colleague, Pradeep Pradhan, also an RTI activist, alleged that police are
deliberately not arresting the attackers. “It is unfortunate that police are
deliberately not arresting the miscreants. That is because many of them are
quite influential,” said Pradhan.
He said Rath
was attacked by a group of miscreants at BMC office while he was on his way to
appear in the hearing of his first appeal petition regarding an RTI case. “He
fell unconscious and was rushed to a hospital. He remained bed-ridden for
several months due to injuries sustained in the attack,” said Pradhan.
Officials of
Badagada police station, in reply to an RTI application filed January 2 with
the police station’s public information officer (PIO) seeking details of the
development in the case, informed that a case was registered against 11 people
for the attack on Rath and that investigations are on, said Pradhan.
Meanwhile,
commissionerate police officials said the case is being investigated by a
sub-inspector rank official and that the attackers will be nabbed soon.
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