{"id":292,"date":"2016-03-28T13:21:48","date_gmt":"2016-03-28T13:21:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=292"},"modified":"2016-03-28T13:21:48","modified_gmt":"2016-03-28T13:21:48","slug":"the-room-where-the-battle-never-ends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=292","title":{"rendered":"The Room Where The Battle Never Ends"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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run Sawant is encouraging me from his adjustable bed to walk inside his house in a rundown building in Badlapur on the outskirts of Mumbai, but a feral dog with bloodshot eyes, lording over this kingdom of shambles, is blocking my way. Finally, Sawant\u2019s police bodyguard has to intervene before the dog steps aside and allows me into the house, where the smell of medicines has seeped into the scruffy walls. A spiffy-looking wheelchair, covered with a thin film of dust, lies in one corner and serves as a snoozing couch for one of their two house cats and all over the room are files and more files. A bed-ridden Sawant, propped up by a mound of pillows, looks outside his window to a world he been trying to change for 10 long, tiring years.\n\nBefore I even enter, the thought comes unbidden \u2013 this is what the life of an RTI activist looks like.\n\nSix years ago, a gunshot wound to Sawant\u2019s spine left him paralysed below the waist. A former councillor in the Kulgaon-Badlapur Municipal Corporation, Sawant had acquired a reputation as a \u201ctroublemaker\u201d and was known to challenge authority. In 2007, he filed a petition against Ambernath MLA Kisan Kathore, opposing Kathore\u2019s election on account of non-disclosure of his wife\u2019s assets. The case was finally settled<\/a> in May 2014 by the Supreme Court, which declared Kathore\u2019s election void. The petition was only one in a series of appeals and RTIs that Sawant filed to confront corruption in the municipal corporation and naturally, threats to his life followed.\n\nDuring that time, an RTI activist called Satish Shetty had come to a gory end in Maharashtra\u2019s Talegaon. He had brought the construction company IRB Infrastructure to its knees in 2009, when he exposed the use of forged documents to acquire land in the villages near Kamshet. His work led to 90 sale deeds being cancelled<\/a>. His work also led to him being knifed to death by five masked men a few months later.\n\n\u201cEven on that day, I knew that I might meet the same fate,\u201d says Sawant, in his soft, almost inaudible mumble as he tells me about how he tried and failed to get protection. \u201cIn fact, in my application I\u2019d mentioned, will I also become another Satish Shetty?\u201d\n\nOn a sunny February day, when Maharashtra\u2019s winter nip had begun to slip out of the air, Sawant made his daily trek across the short Badlapur flyover. The bridge that connects the city\u2019s eastern and western parts, usually witnesses scant traffic and is easy to cross on foot. Sawant walked across onto a slip road, where he stopped to buy fish. A deafening explosion went off, and he presumed a car\u2019s tyres had burst. Two men on a motorcycle whizzed away. Then a searing pain in his lower back rendered him unconscious.\n\nSawant\u2019s premonition came true. He almost became another Satish Shetty.\n

***<\/p>\nThe historic RTI Act might have empowered citizens across the country, but for its most steadfast soldiers, it has often led to violent, solitary deaths. In 2008, Rinku Singh Rahi was shot at for exposing discrepancies in the funds of Muzaffarnagar\u2019s social welfare department. The same year, Lalit Mehta was killed in Jharkhand\u2019s Palamau district for exposing scams in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. Environmentalist Amit Jethwa was shot dead in 2010 in Ahmedabad, followed soon after by Shehla Masood who was killed in front of her house in Bhopal.\n\nIn an every-man-for-himself world, the RTI activist is an odd creature. He continues to chase lofty goals, even if it comes at the great cost of liberty and life. For people like Shetty, Masood, and Jethwa, their private ambitions were linked to common cause and at some point in their lives, the common cause became larger than everything else, overshadowing their lives as private citizens. And finally leading to their deaths.\n\nSawant however, survived, even though he would never be able to walk again. The Sawants filed a complaint with the Maharashtra State Human Rights Commission later in 2010, holding the police responsible for abnegating its duty to protect its citizens and thanks to the swift action of its maverick chairman, former chief justice of the Kerala High Court, SR Bannurmath, he got awarded a \u20b910 lakh compensation.\n\nEven as one battle came to an end, Sawant and his subdued wife, Gauri, picked up another trying to get free and fair investigation into the attack. The police, predictably, was no help at all. After the couple wrote to the then President Pratibha Patil, the CID got involved and conducted a six-month investigation \u2013 but failed to find the attackers. \u201cCID ne sirf humara hi inquiry kiya, samne walon ka nahi,\u201d Gauri says, bitterness staining her voice.\n

\u201cThey saw I was in a wheelchair and wanted to take a selfie with me.\u201d<\/p>\nArun Sawant<\/cite>\n