The killing of activist Lalit Mehta in Jharkhand was a diabolical warning to those who question, write ARUNA ROY and NIKHIL DEY. (Indian Express, June 14, 2008)

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The thousand-strong gathering at the Theological College grounds in Ranchi on June 10 had no doubts over why Lalit Mehta was killed. The 36-year-old engineer turned activist, had no personal enemies or battles. He was a prominent member of The Right to Food Campaign, working in the Vikas Sahyog Kendra in Palamou District, Jharkhand. All he had done was access National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) expenditure records for researchers verifying official records against field data. On May 14, a day before the planned Social Audit of those works, he was brutally murdered. His face was disfigured, and his body badly mutilated. A diabolical warning to those who question.

The police, with unseemly haste, buried the unidentified body, carrying it back 25 kilometres to the scene of the crime, after a hurriedly conducted post-mortem. But the murder did not stop the research. Twelve days later, the social audit established that a large proportion of the Rs 73 crore spent in the district had been siphoned off by contractors, officials and the well-entrenched development mafia. The people of Palamou knew that their entitlements were being pocketed by the corrupt. But they have been helpless victims.

The NREGA has provided an entitlement for the first time. The RTI has given a tool to uncover corrupt practices. The Social Audit is a mandatory process, under the NREGA Act, giving the people a chance to establish the truth and push for change. For the first time a corrupt mafia is threatened by a legally mandated process, which looks at details and places irrefutable documentary proof in the public domain. The corrupt nexus is reacting with pre-meditated, calculated violence.
It is not just Lalit Mehta. There are reports of threats to activists seeking information from different parts of the country. In Rajasthan, Social Audit teams have faced planned attacks in the districts of Banswara and Jhalawar, in the last six months. According to K.N.Tripathi, member of the State Employment Guarantee Council of Jharkhand, Somay Gagarai, the District Convenor of the Congress, for NREGA West Simbhum was killed about two months ago, for trying to access facts on NREGA expenditure in his Block, through an RTI application. Twenty-six days after Lalit's murder, Kameshwar Yadav, a CPI Liberation NREGA activist was killed in Giridih District, Jharkhand for similar reasons. In Orissa's Koraput District, Narayan Hareka, Naib Sarpanch and member of the Orissa Adibasi Manch, was run down by a tractor on his way home, after he had spent a day trying to get NREGA information from the Block Office.

On June 10, 3,000 people marched through Ranchi asking for justice and truth. They wanted the CBI to probe both the murder and the NREGA corruption in Palamou. They demanded that accountability be fixed and the guilty be booked.

The Indian Express on June 13 carried a story on the reports of the Collector and the SP (District Palamau) on the murder of Mehta and the social audit going on in the district. Apart from a range of other alleagtions, their reports accuse Jean Dreze and others of attempting to malign the state government and falsifying statements. This objectionable report is yet another reason why a CBI inquiry should be instituted immediately. Jean Dreze is a member of the NREG Council and is mandated to help audit the scheme by the law of the land. What he did was legitimate and legal. It is absurd that he is being accused by responsible government officers in this fashion.

Social audit and RTI are legal provisions created to encourage people participation, with an obligation on the state to enable such participation. If the state becomes a mute spectator to attacks on activists using these provisions it is no less than leading lambs to the slaughter. The State must act decisively to make sure that all these efforts result in the strongest action against corruption and violence. The rest of us must ensure that they do so now.