Satyendra Dubey was a 31-year-old IIT Kanpur civil engineering graduate working with the National Highways Authority of India and assigned to the prime minister’s pet project, the Golden Quadrilateral, to connect the four corners of India. He was posted at Koderma, Jharkhand.
On discovering rampant corruption and poor implementation of work in the section where he had been posted, Dubey wrote to the prime minister exposing the irregularities. In the letter, received by the prime minister’s office on November 11, 2002, he had named some companies. Fearing retribution, he had requested that his name be kept secret.
But PMO officials circulated his letter along with details of his identity among the bureaucracy. The number of notings on the file bear witness to this (The Indian Express, November 30, 2003). While the file was making the rounds, not one official thought about the threat Dubey was being exposed to.
Why officials in the PMO did not heed Dubey’s request for anonymity is not known. But just over a year later, on November 27, 2003, he was murdered in Gaya, Bihar.
This is a clear signal to everyone that honesty in India has only one result — failure. An honest citizen must be prepared to forfeit one’s life.
This was a very unfortunate event. That does not mean that we should stop being honest. Be it a public servant or a civil servant, they should at all times uphold their integrity. That is the minimum we can expect from a public official. But our society has become so much so that when someone performs an honest duty, we start to worship them because we as citizens has forgotten the basic human values that makes us separate from the evils that are around us, waiting in the dark just to pounce on an opportunity.
Corruption is so deeply rooted in our work culture that public servants already think like they have a right on a cut from every deal or contract that is made from using public money. We all know that when given a situation to choose either money as bribe or die by gun shot or other means, one will at most of times chose the former because as a human being our prime instinct is our survival. But history is replete with many examples where public servants have stood firm in the face of adversity and did not lose ground. Take the example of Socrates many of us know why he chose to drink hemlock. Think once about the situations of T.N Seshan, Ashok Khemka and many more. Don't you think they would have easily been swayed by the temptations of material pleasure, yet they were resilient in the face of adversity.
The truth is hardly any govt. till date has whole heartedly tried to implement anti-corruption laws. If not for Anna Hazare, only God knows what would have been our situation in today. However, the Lokpal still lacks the teeth to convert allegations to convictions, and the bigger question has always been the same "WHERE IS THE WHISTLE BLOWER ACT".
Without a proper legislation on protection of whistle blowers, we will keep seeing the likes of the examples of what happened to Satyendra Dubey.
"The world will be destroyed not by those who are evil but by those who do not do anything about it" - Einstein
Sad to hear that , he was murdered for exposing the truth going on our country !!
It's not just him, 1000s more have, it's just we haven't noticed
There was an episode on crime Patrol about his murder. You can watch it on YouTube.
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To curb these incidents. Whistleblower Policy has been implemented.