Court acquits activist Nikhil Dey, 3 others
An additional district judge (ADJ) court in Ajmer acquitted social activists Nikhil Dey, Naurti Bai, Ram Karan and Chotu Lal in a case of trespass and causing hurt in which they were earlier convicted by the trial court.
The order was passed after complainants of the case compounded the case – in simple words, it means a compromise – to put an end to the 19-year-old dispute, said Indresh Kumar, counsel for the activists.
The case pertains to an incident that took place in Harmara gram panchayat in Ajmer in 1998 when the RTI activists demanded access to records relating to developmental expenditure incurred by the elected representative. The information was demanded to verify complaints of rampant corruption for payments to build rural toilets and rural housing.
A Kishangarh court convicted Dey and three others in the case on June 13 and sentenced them to four months in jail. The sentence was suspended pending an appeal against the conviction in the ADJ court. During the appeal, the complainants approached the convicted RTI activists, offering to withdraw the case. The complainants stated that they wanted to compound the case to put an end to a continual and unnecessary dispute.
The formal application, signed by the complainants, was to be placed in the ADJ court, requesting the withdrawal and the compounding under section 320 of the CRPC (deemed acquittal) of the
This entire sequence of events has unravelled and reinforced the understanding of how such cases can be used as a weapon to harass activists and distract them from their work of fighting corruption and demanding justice for the marginalised and oppressed communities
case.
The two separate orders of the ADJ set aside the conviction of Nikhil Dey, Naurti Bai, Ramkaran and Chotu Lal acquitting them from all charges under sections 451 and 323 of the IPC. The court passed the orders on July 12, 2017. Copies of court orders were received in the last week of July 2017, said a statement from MKSS (Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan).
“For the MKSS and the RTI community, this has come as a relief from a 19-year-long trial and a conviction. Both the process of the trial and the conviction was a regrettable miscarriage of justice,” the statement said.
Reacting to the development, Nikhil Dey said, “We saw our continued effort to prove our innocence of both motives and action as part of our struggle for ethics and justice. We were confident that this case would end in an acquittal.”
“This entire sequence of events has unravelled and reinforced the understanding of how such cases can be used as a weapon to harass activists and distract them from their work of fighting corruption and demanding justice for the marginalised and oppressed communities,” he added.