ROAD TO NOWHERE

The silencing of the whistle blower seared the nation8217;s conscience. But it was all too momentary. It8217;s four year since and the trial moves at a snail8217;s pace in a Patna court. The CBI has lined up 73 witnesses, but in the three years since the court started hearing the case, only 29 of them have been examined.

The trial came to a halt on two occasions when some accused managed to escape from the court premises. First it was prime accused Mantu Kumar who fled from the court in September 2005 and then Uday Kumar in December 2006. Both were rearrested within a month of their escapes but the trial remained suspended in that period.

The CBI blames the district and jail administration for the tortuously slow progress of justice. CBI counsel A N Mishra said that on many dates the accused simply don8217;t turn up in the court on one pretext or the other. 8216;8216;On our side there is no shortcoming,8217;8217; he says. The blame for the delay caused by the escape too, he says, is entirely on the district police and local administration.

But the case, clearly, is not on the priority list of the CBI as well. Last year it had decided to review and cut down the number of witnesses so the litigation would end early. But no action was taken. In fact, Mishra repeats even today the same words: 8216;8216;We will soon review the case and decide on the number of witnesses from our side.8217;8217; What is more, the incident is being seen primarily as one of a simple highway robbery and murder for just Rs 4,400.

Whatever the outcome of the trial, the slain engineer8217;s family members don8217;t have faith in the CBI8217;s investigation. 8216;8216;We have lost hope. The real culprits are still at large. No one is interested in punishing them. I believe all of them are trying to protect the big fishes involved in the corruption my brave son disclosed,8217;8217; say Bageshwari Dubey, the 63-year-old father of Satyendra, sitting outside his house in Shahpur village.

Bageshwari and wife Phulmati Devi stay with their second son, Dhananjay, in Noida near New Delhi, where he works. Despite their reluctance to live in a big city, Dhananjay wants his parents and his unmarried sister to stay with him. 8216;8216;I don8217;t want to leave them alone as memories of my brother haunt them,8217;8217; says Dhananjay.

When they travelled to Shahpur recently for the Chhath festival, it was a painful rewind to those traumatic days. Especially when they trod on the freshly concretised lane that will bear the name of their son.

The tall, spare man with a shock of white on his head cannot hide his frustration. 8216;8216;What satisfaction will we get if three petty road robbers are punished? There was a larger conspiracy behind my son8217;s murder. He was not killed in a simple road robbery incident,8217;8217; he says.

Bageshwari is angry with the UPA Government for not caring about the sacrifice made by his son. He recalls how Sonia Gandhi had sent her emissary and offered the family all kind of monetary help after the murder. 8216;8216;I rejected everything and demanded action against the culprits. The emissary pleaded that they were helpless since they were not in power. But after coming to power the UPA has done nothing,8217;8217; he says, his eyes moistening.

He has a question that many others too think is pertinent to the investigation. Bageshwari wants to know why the CBI never bothered to dig into the deaths of two suspects in the case, Sheonath Sah and Mukendra Paswan, who died 25 hours after being interrogated by them. 8216;8216;The CBI termed their death as suicide. But we believe they were murdered to prevent the names of big fishes involved in Satyendra8217;s killing from coming out. The CBI never bothered to find out who killed them and why.8217;8217;

Dhananjay Dubey, the engineer8217;s younger brother, has now decided to file a protest petition before the trial court seeking a re-investigation into the murder of his brother. But he is daunted by the task in hand. 8216;8216;How can I alone fight the CBI? What does a common citizen do when the premier investigating agency of the country fails?8217;8217; he asks.

Besides, he has often found himself caught in the labyrinthine ways of the state. When he deposed in the trial last December, he pointed out that his brother8217;s murder seemed to be part of a larger conspiracy hatched by contractors and officials of the NHAI against someone who was spilling the beans on their misdeeds. But CBI counsel L R Ansari picked on Dhananjay8217;s statement that Satyendra did not have any personal enmity with anyone and argued, 8216;8216;He clearly said that there was no personal enmity. So far as the allegation about a conspiracy is concerned, it is based on hearsay and inferences drawn by him.8217;8217;

But there were pointers to Satyendra Dubey8217;s disclosures being true. The stretch from Barachatti to Aurangabad on which he worked has now been completed but there are talks about the construction work being substandard. In December last year, cracks8212;some as wide at 15 metres8212;appeared at several points in the completed portion that had been thrown open to traffic. Though they were subsequently repaired by the construction company, a question mark was left dangling over the quality of work done by the companies.

The National Highway Authority of India NHAI had viewed the appearance of the cracks within a year of completion of construction work darkly. NHAI manager A K Singh, in-charge of the Aurangabad-Barachatti section, had accepted that the cracks were a result of fault in construction. He had, however, quickly added that the cracks were not of a serious nature. 8216;8216;Cracks can take place due to several technical factors. So we have asked the companies to re-lay the damaged portions before the formal handover. It is being done and we are also testing the quality. Such things happen. In any case they constituted only 2 per cent of the entire length,8217;8217; Singh had said dismissively.

The villagers at Shahpur are, however, vigilant about the Satyendra Dubey Smriti Path. Siwan District Magistrate Santosh Kumar Mall, an IIT Kanpur batchmate of Satyendra, is taking personal interest in the project sanctioned under the Chief Minister8217;s District Development Fund that aims to extend urban amenities in rural areas.

Villagers constantly monitor the construction work, and raise a voice should they notice any improper work by the contractor. 8216;8216;This road is close to our heart as it is dedicated to the memory of one of the most worthy sons this village,8217;8217; says Jagdeo Prasad, a villager.

Walking along the completed portion of the road, his gait Bageshwari Dubey gets emotional when he says villagers have occasionally pointed out acts of corruption in the execution of the lane construction. 8216;8216;My son paid with his life for corruption in a road project and now similar charges are being raised in the construction of a lane dedicated to his memory,8217;8217; he says. He has urged the contractor to do an honest day8217;s work as the road will bear the name of his son, who never compromised on truth.

Life for Bageshwari Dubey is becoming increasingly exasperating and he sees no justice ever being his son8217;s portion. He even wants to forget the case in court. Of his six living children, four are now married. His unmarried daughter lives with them in Noida. The old man never discusses Satyendra before his wife Phulmati, scared that the trauma left behind with so much pain and difficulty will once again resurface.

8216;8216;We don8217;t know whether the country repents the loss of an honest, upright and talented engineer but we have lost our son. Both my wife and I will continue to grieve privately till we leave this world,8217;8217; declares the father, struggling to hold back the tears.

Now if only the country stood up for what a young, courageous son had thought was the right step to take.