RIGHT GONE WRONG

Twenty years of the RTI Act have seen more than 100 :ransparency activists killed, with the criminal justice system largely apathetic to their plight. Yet, activi: ts continue their fight

- BY NIRMAL JOVIAL

Sandeep Shetty was checking his email when he heard the news that would change his life. It was January 13, 2010, and he was at home in Talegaon Dabhade in Pune, Maharashtra. His brother Satish had gone for his usual morning walk 15 minutes earlier. There was a knock at the door. Then a young man from the neighbourhood burst through, breathless. "Your brother... he's been attacked," he said.

Even as Sandeep sprinted after the messenger, his mind clung to normalcy. A scuffle? A fistfight? "I wasn't expecting what I was about to see," he said. The spot was around 500 metres from his house, on a main road that connected Talegaon Dabhade to National Highway 4. There lay Satish, in a pool of blood. He had been attacked with sharp weapons by masked men on a bike. The onlookers did not aid him and when he was eventually taken to a hospital, he was pronounced dead on arrival.

In the last five years of his life, 2005-2010, Satish had exposed a string of land scams in Talegaon Dabhade, Lonavala and Pimpri-Chinchwad—all prime real estate hubs in Maharashtra. But the very tool that fuelled his fight for transparency also sealed his fate—he was the first RTI activist to be killed in India.

As the Right to Information Act, 2005, marks its 20th anniversary, the milestone is overshadowed by the stories of people like Satish who sacrificed their life in pursuit of accountability.

Sandeep often questioned his brother inviting trouble through activism. But seeing his brother's mutilated body changed everything. Since then, Sandeep has been relentlessly fighting for justice.

He first approached the local police and then the CBI. Both failed to find the culprits. The CBI filed closure reports twice, in 2014 and 2018, citing lack of evidence. But, Sandeep kept the case alive by taking the battle to court—from the trial court to the Bombay High Court and finally the Supreme Court.