Bhubaneswar: More than five months after an RTI activist was attacked in the city allegedly for exposing corruption in Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC), investigations by the commissionerate police have made no headway and no arrest has been made so far.
The RTI activist, Binayak Rath, a retired government employee who has been using RTI extensively to expose corruption in BMC since 2008, was attacked at BMC office August 27, 2015. Badagada police registered a case (214/15) in this regard the same day under Sections 341, 325, 307, 506, 34 of IPC.
Rath’s colleague, Pradeep Pradhan, also an RTI activist, alleged that police are deliberately not arresting the attackers. “It is unfortunate that police are deliberately not arresting the miscreants. That is because many of them are quite influential,” said Pradhan.
He said Rath was attacked by a group of miscreants at BMC office while he was on his way to appear in the hearing of his first appeal petition regarding an RTI case. “He fell unconscious and was rushed to a hospital. He remained bed-ridden for several months due to injuries sustained in the attack,” said Pradhan.
Officials of Badagada police station, in reply to an RTI application filed January 2 with the police station’s public information officer (PIO) seeking details of the development in the case, informed that a case was registered against 11 people for the attack on Rath and that investigations are on, said Pradhan.
Meanwhile, commissionerate police officials said the case is being investigated by a sub-inspector rank official and that the attackers will be nabbed soon.
