Patna HC to state govt: protect Dubey family & staff no matter what

The court also directed the state to provide protection to engineers and contractors on the entire stretch where construction is on in Bihar. When state counsel A K Singh pleaded that the state did not have enough resources to do so, an agitated Chief Justice remarked: ‘‘You borrow money from where it is available. Pitch tents at each kilometre of the highway if necessary and put patrolling teams. You have to do this, no matter what it takes.’’

The petition was filed by M P Gupta, based on The Indian Express reports on how Dubey, an engineer with the NHAI, was killed nearly a year after he wrote to the PMO about corruption in the Golden Quadrilateral project with which he was a project director. Dubey had felt threatened after his name was leaked out, and had written about it to the chairman of the NHAI.

The petition, in which the Express coverage on Dubey’s murder (Speak UP, Gun Down) was included, prayed for a CBI inquiry into the murder; adequate compensation and protection to the family of Dubey; and directives to the state and the Centre to take steps to ensure time-bound completion of national and state highways in the state. The court said, the issue of compensation is a ‘‘matter of self-respect of a family and a question which is personal to them.’’ The court also left it to the state government to decide if it wanted to investigate the case itself or hand it over to the CBI.

The court summoned the officials to ‘‘assure the High Court of a dedicated plan that monitoring on this National Highway will be such that the highway will go on progressing without hindrances.’’

Petitioner Gupta had submitted that the conditions of the NH and state highways in the state were the basic cause of economic stagnation which in turn caused several other problems ranging from increasing crime and outmigration.

The petition said Dubey’s murder was shocking example of how the state’s highway project had fallen into the hands of the mafia and pleaded the court’s intervention to free it from the underworld. The petition was filed on December 8.