Tags:
Journalism of Courage
The dead share no secrets but the murdered often leave behind clues. In narrowing Satyendra Dubey8217;s killing to a case of petty robbery, the Central Bureau of Investigation seems to have resolutely ignored those clues. When Dubey, then a National Highway Authority of India project manager working on the Golden Quadrilateral programme, was killed on November 27, he had in effect already drafted the terms of reference of an inquiry into his death. He had blown the whistle on misappropriation of funds and circumvention of due procedure in the execution of the prestigious project. Before he was murdered near Gaya railway station that November night, he had already expressed fear, in writing, that his life was in certain danger.
In the chargesheet in the case filed on Friday, the CBI has neatly separated Dubey8217;s death from the wider matrix in which he was engaged. By the investigating agency8217;s account, it would seem that the IIT engineer8217;s murder is a simple case of petty robbery. When he alighted off a train in Gaya, he was in possession of Rs 4,000. He was waylaid by hoodlums, the money was seized, and in the ensuing scuffle he was killed. This neat theory, however, has already unravelled. This week8217;s chargesheet is already tripping on loose ends. There are, first, the suicides of two persons questioned by the Bureau early this year. There is, second, the missing rickshaw-puller, Pradeep Kumar, the first eyewitness produced in the case, who disappeared soon after his statement was recorded. The CBI seems to have expunged all this from the Dubey probe to produce an open-shut case of robbery-inspired murder.
