Whistleblowing fraught with danger in Karnataka

A worthy fight

Three years have passed since Mangaluru-based RTI activist Vinayak Baliga was murdered for exposing misappropriation of funds meant for the renovation of a temple. A few weeks ahead of a crucial hearing in court to appoint auditors, Baliga, who had filed over hundreds of RTIs to expose corruption, was hacked to death near his house.

“After the murder, the chartered accountant who had agreed to take up the auditing of temple accounts withdrew citing threats to the safety of his staff. At present, all the accused are out on bail and they have succeeded in getting the High Court to stay the trial in the sessions court in Mangaluru as they questioned my appointment as the public prosecutor,” explains High Court advocate Ravindranath Kamath.

At Vinayak’s house in Kodialbail, his sister, Anuradha Baliga points to his portrait and says, “Four police commissioners have come and gone. Three judges in the sessions court had heard the case. There are several hurdles. Yet, we are confident of securing justice.”

Anuradha, sister of murdered RTI activist Vinayak Baliga looks up at his portrait placed alongside the pictures of her deceased parents at her home in Kodialbail.

Three hundred kilometres away, in Chitradurga, Dr J S Madhhu Kumarr, a dentist cum farmer, has been caught up in a Kafkaesque nightmare due to his other avatar as an RTI activist.

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In his bid to expose the misuse of The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act funds and the local sand mafia in his hometown at Jagalur taluk in Davanagere, Madhhu has had a harrowing experience.

The first serious incident came in 2013, when around 40 members of the local Zilla Panchayat, angered by his RTIs, attacked him in broad daylight and even circulated a video of the act. The same men later looted and ransacked his house.

Cases against activists

Since then, five cases have been registered against him at the behest of local policemen who, Madhhu alleges, have been hand in glove with his attackers. He also alleges that he and his colleagues have been subjected to torture behind bars and there have been at least five attempts on his life.

“Once when I went to register complaints, the local police tore up my complaint letter. An eyewitness who was deposing in my case was brutally attacked. Eventually, I was forced to leave my village as I was being subjected to humiliations on a daily basis. Now I live in Chitradurga,” explains Madhhu, who represents himself in courts.

In another case, for the past two years, Pape Gowda, a superintendent at the Karnataka Forest Development Corporation in Chikkamagaluru, has been fighting a lonely battle to initiate an investigation into the alleged illegal allotment of forest land.

Last year, as Gowda was attempting to expose the irregularities, he claimed, he was attacked by local goons at the behest of those involved in the land deal. Despite this, his plea for protection made under the Whistleblowers Protection Act was ignored, he alleges.

Gowda, who has made submissions regarding this to the High Court of Karnataka, is seeking a CBI probe into the matter. His lawyer told DH that they are now hoping to get a gun licence for him.

These cases are not in isolation. Karnataka, which has logged around 36 incidents (8 murders, 15 assaults, 13 harassment or threats), since the RTI Act came into force in 2005, is the third most unsafe state (in terms of total incidents), according to the (only available) data collected by Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI).

However, experts believe the real number of attacks is much higher.

“In many cases, RTI activists work in isolation and hence are vulnerable. In rural areas, many may even be filing a complaint for the first time and won’t know about the rules or what they need to do in these situations. They may not even report the incident as it may invite further backlash,” explained
B H Veeresh, convenor, Karnataka RTI Activists State Committee.

Several RTI activists and whistleblowers told DH that they faced trouble in getting police protection despite a state home department policy that promises to grant immediate protection to RTI activists and whistleblowers who perceive a threat on their life.

Life under threat

“The rules have not been implemented in true spirit. I had written to the police seeking protection as my life was under threat. A few policemen visited my residence, inspected the surroundings and took copies of the documents I had procured and left. They never turned up again, neither did they bother to ever enquire if I was alright,” said Sai Datta, an RTI activist.

Like Datta, for Hanume Gowda, a seasoned RTI activist and whistleblower, getting police protection turned out to be a difficult task. “I had filed several RTI applications against the illegal acquisition and conversion of government land. Subsequently, fake cases were booked against me and I was attacked a couple of times. I tried filing a complaint with the police but they refused to file an FIR. Then I approached the State Human Rights Commission which directed the police to give me protection but the police stated that my case doesn’t merit police protection. After repeated appeals, I was finally given a gunman in 2017,” he said.

For Vinod B, an advocate from Shivamogga, who has taken political bigwigs from the region to courts over land deals and disappropriate assets, the cost has been personal. He is currently facing civil defamation suit worth Rs 5 crore, along with a criminal defamation suit.

Vinod says he didn’t get any kind of support from the authorities in-charge of acting on his complaints. “The ‘corrupt’ political leaders engage high profile lawyers and obtain relief in the form of stay orders. An RTI filed to seek information on the status of the complaint before the Enforcement Directorate was rejected on the ground that the information cannot be disclosed as it pertains to the investigation even though I myself was the complainant. Since 2012, I’ve been fighting a lonely battle with no cooperation from any quarters,” says Vinod.

(With inputs from Harsha)