It has become a topic for debate in the midst of the  

back and forth if everything is right as rain as regards the actions and intentions of the Right To Information(RTI) activists in the field then why some of them came under the lens of suspicion inviting legal actions and arrests.

As a journalist, I do not have any malaise intent to make any personal comments against any activist but when in certain instances their actions spill out of the brim of activists’ ethics then they can be as well looked as common man and their actions cannot surpass social scrutiny.

Even the system that rules over us is not right as rain and rather there are numerous loopholes in the governance that is obliged to share facts and let people know where it has erred.

That is where comes the role RTI which was constituted in 2005.    

2023: Right to Information (RTI) activist three activists, Sudhansu Sekhar Rout, Pradip Pradhan and Smruti Ranjan Behera   were arrested in 2023 by the police in connection with an alleged harassment caused to the Olympian sprinter Dutee Chand in various ways.

Two of the three implicated were arrested by the Mahila police while another one evaded the arrest for over two months. Mental harassment is a serious offence under the law of the land.

And inflicting such harassment in a way can be connoted as a case of stalking when someone,  he or she was out of the country representing the nation in the Olympics.     

Anyway, one who was arrested last also heads a political outfit “Mo Dala” who was in very recent times was also implicated in an alleged ‘fake news’ spread against a bureaucrat turned BJD member, V K Pandian charging that the latter was enjoying a disproportionate security cover at the cost of the state exchequer.

The said RTI activist and his friends somehow did not buckle down before the legal pressure and instead challenged that they had not manufactured any fake news as alleged. They stood firm to their stance but the high court ordered their arrest in 2024.

It can well be said that the activist trio had not committed any blameworthy offence yet were arrested by the order of the honourable High Court.

Crossing the ‘Laxman Rekha’

Dutee speaks

But, in the case of Dutee the culpability was more or less evident. “ They made communications with me, when it was the Corona-19 phase and I was in the Olympics hence I had my limitations” said Dutee while talking to NYOOOZ.COM.

“ What was baffling was that they made personal jibes at my private life, my partner and how I delinked myself from my parents and enjoyed my life” Dutee added further saying that such gyrations obviously hampered my mental state affecting my performance, of course”.

Dutee also alleged that the trio, one of them handling a news portal kept posting against me on Facebook and a stage came when they asked me to give them some money or else the postings would continue. When I bluntly refused to give(money) and let them go ahead.

After my return to India I took up the matter with the Mahila Police preceded by a Press meet that led to their arrests in two phases.

It is difficult to comprehend under which ethics of the RTI such mental pressure tactics are allowed.

Now, coming to a more recent issue that is about the death (suicide) of a student and the subsequent fall out in the shape of agitation by Nepali students in the campus and their eviction from the campus and comeback is already a history.

But the RTI activist Pradip Pradhan has come out with all the cylinders blasting to allege how KIIT and KISS have indulged themselves in illegal land encroachment to build the empire and Pradhan had at many occasions earlier also made similar allegations under intimation to the concerned departments of the State government. KIIT & KISS have been there for the last more than three decades and in-between several parties have ruled, come and gone.

"Were all the governments, Congress or BJD and now BJP blindfolded and not initiating any action against such an alleged mega land scam” wondered Anil Dhir, an acknowledged historian by his own rights and an erudite activist said this reporter.

Leave aside governments, can it be possible that all our institutions like Judiciary, vigilance and other wings of vigil are sitting with their blinkers on for all those years and not taking action against KIIT & KISS founder Dr Achyut Samanta? Dhir has raised this question ardently.

While talking about students of KISS, allegations are there that they are being exploited (what does the word ‘Exploitation’ connote here not clarified). Or even being a sub-standard diet like ‘Chuda and Chini(Sugar) in breakfasts, how does the allegation sound as if Chuda-Chini is an alien diet? In fact, suppose that sometimes, Chuda-Chini or Chuda-jaggery are traditional Tiffin in Odisha and Bihar as well which is bowel friendly and healthy.

Besides official grants, the concept of charity even with dignity requires funding or donation which is inseparable. Which such a body, including UNICEF can carry on without funds.    

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