Yet another RTI activist shot dead in Bihar

RTI activist Rajendra Singh, who shot to fame after exposing several scams in Bihar, was shot dead at Motihari on Tuesday.

Unidentified miscreants shot him from close range when he was crossing Piprakothi police station in Motihari in day hours. He died on the spot.

The RTI activist, who exposed toilet scam, teachers’ recruitment scam, the appointment of cops scam, and embezzlement of funds during construction of Indira Awas Yojna, had earlier sought police security cover as he had been receiving constant threats to his life.

But his petition for security cover remained ‘under process’ as the file moved from one table to another in the district police chief’s office.

The RJD has taken strong exception to the killing of the RTI activist. “In Nitish Kumar regime, anyone who tries to raise his voice against the prevalent corrupt system or exposes how money has been swindled, will be eliminated,” said former Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav.

One too many

Earlier, another RTI activist Ram Naresh Pandey was shot dead in 2014 in Nalanda district when he exposed large-scale corruption in the appointment of postal employees in Nalanda district, the home-town of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.

The State has a long history of whistle-blowers being gunned down. A whistle-blower Ram Vilas Singh was killed in 2011 in broad daylight for launching a movement to expose the police-criminal nexus in the forest areas of Lakhisaria and adjoining districts. In neighbouring Begusarai district, some unidentified criminals on a motorcycle gunned down Shashidhar Mishra, a local RTI activist, at his residence.

But the most unfortunate murder was that of an IITian Satyendra Dubey, an engineer working with National Highway Authority of India (NHAI). Perceived to be a whistle-blower, who exposed corruption in the Golden Quadrilateral project in Bihar, the young engineer, posted in Gaya, was killed on November 27, 2003, shortly after he had written to the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee detailing financial and contractual irregularities in the project.

An alumnus of IIT-Kanpur, Dubey had earlier blown the lid off various instances of large-scale irregularities in NHAI sub-contracting and quality control rules at Koderma and Gaya stretches of the project.

The murder sparked nationwide protest, amidst call to bring in legislation to protect the whistleblowers who expose corruption.