In what has been seen as an attempt to shield information and protect the corrupt officials having nexus with politicians, the RTI activists are subjected to various kind of harassment by the state government machinery and the police in Assam.
Though there have been a number of cases of RTI activists being implicated false cases but the case of Sanjeet Das an activist from village Ghogra, of Panbari Panchayat in Assam’s Sonitpur is bizarre in series of such cases on RTI activists in Assam. Sanjeet Das was threatened and blatantly tortured right inside the police station because he sought information from authorities on the list of beneficiaries (APL, BPL, AAY and Annapurna), commodity distributed from PDS, commodity allotment (quantity) each family and rate at which it is distributed of Dhekiajuli block of the district.
This was not the first case, earlier noted RTI activist Akhil Gogoi, who exposed corruption of the Assam government departments is facing the charges of having nexus with Maoist. Akhil Gogoi accused to have been the agent of Maoist has been rewarded by several organisations at the national level for his excellent work in exposing corruption through Right to Information Act.
Sanjeet Das’ case started on September 22, 2009 when he submitted his questions to the deputy director of the supply department seeking information on PDS.
The deputy director of the supply depar-tment asked questioner through an official letter on October 27, 2009 to pay Rs 6,000 to PDS office to rec-eive 20 pages document in reply.