People protest in their demand for whistlblower protection bill
He remembers it like it happened yesterday. November 27, 2003 is forever etched in mind. A phone call pierced the silence in the wee hours to inform him that his brother, Satyendra Dubey had been shot dead.An Assistant Project Manager at the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI), Satyendra Dubey fought corruption despite the threats. He paid for it with his life.
Today, his brother Dhananjay joined a group of protesters from across the country urging Parliamentarians to pass the Whistleblowers' Protection Bill this session that will ensure that whistleblowers like his brother don't pay the price for fighting corruption and exposing wrongdoing within the system.
"If we have a strong bill, what happened to 'bhaiya' won't happen to someone else," he says.
Sanjay Sahni travelled two days by train to reach the capital to join this protest. His colleague and friend, Ram Kumar Thakur, a member of Bihar MGNREGA Watch, was shot dead in March last year on his way home. He had filed a number of RTIs on work under the union government's flagship scheme the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme better known as MNREGA.
The threats started after he filed a case with the Vigilance Commission. The village head, the main accused in this case went underground for a few weeks and is now back in the village. He has still not been arrested and the case has not progressed.
"On the other hand", says Sanjay, "His wife, three children and brother live in fear. They still get threats to withdraw the case. What kind of justice is this where the main accused roams scot free and the people who lost family members are hiding to save themselves?"
Wednesday was the fifth day of protest outside the offices of the two big national parties; the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Indian National Congress. People from different parts of the country have come together in the hope that Parliament passes the Grievance Redress Bill and the Whistleblowers' Protection Bill, which will strengthen the fight against corruption.
"The bills have gone through various processes in Parliament, they have been modified and now what we have are Bills that all major parties agree on. The reason these two bills are so crucial to go through this session is because, if they are not passed, they will lapse. It effectively means that all the work that has been put into these Bills over years will come to naught. We have got assurances from both the Congress and the BJP that they will support the Bill but there seems to be no serious attempt at pushing for their passage in this session," says Anjali Bhardwaj, member of National Campaign for People's Right to Information.
There have been at least 30 deaths of whistleblowers reported in just the last one year. This is the last session before the country heads into the next general elections. The first few days of this session have been a near washout with repeated adjournments on the separate state of Telangana. But for the families of the whistleblowers, every day lost in Parliament means the fear of losing the much needed legal protection.