Friends,
I present before you a particular case related with an RTI activist which I thought I must bring before every one. The purpose of presenting these facts is not to discredit an individual or to expose someone but just to present different facets of RTI activities. I matter is related to Mr A. He is a resident of Sitapur district in Uttar Pradesh. He is also a ward member of the Panchayat. We came to know of Mr A through one of our mutual friends and a true RTI activist from Mumbai who sent a mail on one of the yahoo groups telling about Mr A and also presenting an Article by another highly sincere and respected journalist narrating his plight. We naturally got alarmed at this and my husband, an IPS officer himself, immediately got Mr A ‘s phone number and called him. Mr A was in Lucknow and so requested him to come to our residence at Gomti Nagar so that we could take up the matter further and help him righteously. Mr A agreed to this but did not really come. Then a few more mails came from two of our friends. One of this mail also recommended giving the RTI Gallantry award of the National RTI Forum to Mr A. This made us get even more serious. We again contact Mr A on our own, got to know that he was at Lucknow, requested him to have a meet but the meeting did not materialize. We got highly curious about the case and we decided to go deeper into the matter. Then I talked to a large number of persons at his place, including different local journalists, police officials and others. The result of all this is I present before you- Mr A has been a fairly active social and political person. He contested the Nagar Panchayat elections in 1995 and 2001 but got defeated. But he won the election is 2007 and is presently the ward member. Due to political activities, he and Mr B, who is the Nagar Panchayat Chairman, have developed keen political rivalry. The political gamesmanship is said to have become quite intense. Mr B has been the Chairman of the Panchayat for the last 15 years. It is generally believed that he chooses to remain with the powers that be and has a long criminal history of nearly 30 cases, as per the Police records. About his general reputation, the persons to whom I talked were not of high opinion. It is also true that Mr A has asked a large number of information from various authorities under the Right to Information Act, which are against Mr B’s work as the Panchayat chairman. Again, so far he has not received reply to any of these queries. The police version is that the current lot of activities started when on 08/02/2009 one lady registered a police complaint against Mr A’s family u/s 323/504 IPC. The complaint was about Mr A‘s family supposedly having beaten that lady’s handicapped son. Then onwards, a series of activities started. The next day Mr A made a complaint before the local police of his wife having been forcibly kidnapped by Mr B and his goons from their residence and having been raped/ molested. He produced no medical certificate to support his complaints. From my talks with the local people, I have been told that when Mr A’s wife came to the police station and was asked to recognize Mr B, she failed to do so and picked up some other person. He moved to the UP SC/SCT Commission, where as per the police version, his complaint was dismissed on 28/04/2010. He has also presumably filed a complaint u/s 156(3) of the CrPC to register the FIR against Mr B which is still pending. He has also made a complaint about the murder of his little daughter about which almost everyone unanimously told that she died due to drowning in the pond in front of their house. At this stage another story also emerged about there being a person Mr C, a rather poor person, who was presumably given a part of the Nagar Panchayat land by Mr A without any official authority for Rs. 20,000. For certain reasons now possibly they have fallen out and Mr C is openly blaming Mr A of forcing him to leave the place and is harassing him for more money. Mr C is the person whom Mr A has accused of committing the murder of his daughter. Again, Mr A has produced no Post-mortem report of his daughter. Mr A has so far got five cases under the SC/ST Act registered against various persons which are Crime Nos 134/92, 205/98, 370/2000, 346/2000 and 446/2007 under various sections of SC/SCT Act. Other than these facts on record, when I talked with people belonging to media, including that from Hindustan, Prati Din, Amar Ujala , Dainik Jagran and others, most of them were unanimous that Mr A has an old habit of harassing people through such measures like the wrongful use of the SC/ST act, or by sending a large number of Complaint letters to many higher authorities and so on. Some of them also used the word “black-mailer” and “an old player” for Mr A. Having presented facts as they are, I would conclude that though there is always a probability of truth being actually otherwise, but I somehow tend to believe the version given by so many people and supported by various documents. But then this is only my personal view and I don’t impose it on anyone. I present this long story about Mr A even at the cost of risk of personal harm as well as of making some people feel bad about it or getting enraged, not exactly to show a particular individual in a negative shade but for these two reasons- 1. To request all the friends that let us first go deep into the facts of every case related with RTI and social activism before taking it up 2. To request us all to kindly differentiate between those who are using RTI for a genuine purpose or are misusing it These are very important because as long as we are not able to differentiate between the right and wrong among the RTI and social activists, there would be every risk and danger of RTI activities and social acts losing their credibility. Finally I must say that this is not a final fact-finding report but mere narration of facts and my personal view. In such cases, there is always a probability of having missed the real truth. I have not named Mr A because it seems to be in bad taste but whoever contacts me personally about him, I shall tell Mr A’s name. Dr Nutan Thakur, Convener, National RTI Forum, Lucknow # 94155-34525
