RTI helps Mulund blast accused get bail after 7 years

By Anand Holla

Posted On Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 02:02:10 AM

RTI application gave information, based on which a judicial 

enquiry showed that Mulund blast accused Adnan Mulla, 

was illegally detained for 35 days; HC granted him bail on Monday

Mulund-Vile Parle-Mumbai Central blasts case, was granted bail by the Bombay High Court on Monday. What eventually came to Mulla’s rescue is a confidential judicial enquiry that had indicted three cops for illegally detaining Mulla for 35 days, the first hint of which came from the Right To Information (RTI) plea that his brother-in-law and prime accused Saquib Nachan had filed. The Division Bench of Justices B H Marlapalle and V K Tahilramani on Monday granted Mulla bail, with orders to report to the Padgha police everyday till the trial commenced, and once a week then on. Behind bars since May 2003, Mulla - the last accused to be arrested in the case - was to get married 19 days after he was put behind bars. Adnan Mulla, who was illegally detained Holding a confidential judicial inquiry into Mulla’s alleged illegal detention, the Principal Judge of the Sessions Court T V Nalawade had submitted its report to the HC in July 2008, in which it had indicted three police officers “responsible for Mulla’s illegal, unauthorised detention for 35 days”. The report had held Assistant Police Inspector (API) N K Patil (then in charge, Padgha police), API R V Vhanmane (Crime Branch), and ACP R V Padwal (investigating officer, Mulund blasts), as the policemen behind Mulla’s detention. During those 35 days, Mulla claimed to have been tortured to give false statements against Nachan, and to become a witness or approver in the case. When Saquib Nachan was to be arrested in the Mulund blasts case on March 27, 2003, at Padgha, Mulla was among the crowd who had obstructed the police from arresting Nachan. Mulla surrendered before the Padgha police on May 5, 2003, only to be taken to Padwal’s Crime Branch office and to be kept in a torture cell, the inquiry revealed. The same day, the Padgha station diary shows that the Padgha police handed Mulla over to the Crime Branch “for investigation in the Mulund blasts,” but his actual arrest date has been shown as June 9, 2003 - 35 days after. The report had observed, “Mulla’s detention during this period was illegal, unauthorised. There is clear probability that the investigating agency did not want to make Mulla an accused, but a witness.” The HC too, in July 2008, had indicted the Mumbai police on the basis of this report. However, the illegal detention theory first came up, when brother-in-law Nachan filed an RTI application, which disclosed how Padwal had allegedly written a letter to Padgha police on May 5 to hand over Mulla’s custody, of which a diary entry too was made. Mulla’s lawyer Mubin Solkar then sought a judicial inquiry on this basis. While Mulla’s fiancee is still waiting to marry him, the State has sought a stay on the bail order for four weeks to file an appeal against it before the apex court. “The clinching judicial inquiry report and the RTI disclosure, laying bare his illegal detention, have come to Mulla’s rescue. The inquiry may not prove his innocence, though it surely does not prove his guilt. The prosecution’s only allegation against Mulla is of driving other accused to Mahuli Hills, where they would allegedly undertake arms training,” said Solkar.

Rs 40 lakh: Cost of one extradition attempt of Quattrocchi

PTI, Feb 21, 2010, 01.47pm IST

NEW DELHI:

A single attempt of the CBI to get Bofors kickback

case accused Ottavio Quattrocchi extradited from

Argentina in 2007 made a dent of over Rs 40 lakh to

the exchequer.

The agency sent two of its senior officials twice to
get the elusive Italian businessman from the Latin American
country in 2007 but failed in its attempt as it could not produce
proper legal documents before the court there.


CBI, which faced flak for its unsuccessful attempts to
bring Quattrocchi to India for standing trial in the case,
spent Rs 40.14 lakh on the trips to Argentina on two
officials which includes expenses on their visits, fees
of the local counsel, translation charges, transportation and
expenditure on boarding and lodging, an RTI reply from the agency says.

RTI applicant Abhishek Shukla had sought the details of
all the foreign visits made by CBI teams during the probe
of Bofors kickback case along with the expenditure but the
agency did not give any details other than the Argentina visit.

"During the last five years (since January 2005), a team of two
CBI officers had made two trips to Argentina in the year 2007
for 25 and eight days respectively in connection with the extradition
of Ottavio Quattrocchi from Argentina in Bofors case," the agency said in its reply.

RTI Act not being implemented: Aruna Roy

 

Express News Service

First Published : 21 Feb 2010 04:34:00 AM IST

BANGALORE:  “In the present political climate, it is 
becoming increasingly difficult to take informed choices,” 
said Magsaysay award winner and leading RTI activist 

Aruna Roy on Saturday.At the 2nd Asia Pacific Conference

of Community Radio Broadcasters at United Theological College.

 

Aruna Roy said, “Our home minister asks the civil 
society to take an informed choice on Operation Green
Hunt, however, when the freedom of entry to these places
are restricted, how is it possible to take an informed choice?”
she asked.Roy said that when there is large-scale displacement
and extermination of people, there is bound to be suspicion on the
Centre’s actions.

She said, “The home minister fails to understand that there are 
people who are neither part of the Naxals nor of Salwa Judum.” 

Roy said that atrocities are being systematically committed against
the Dalits in India, “but unfortunately they find little space in the media today.” 

Roy said, “It is unfortunate that even though the RTI Act 
has been in place since 2005, it is still not being implemented fully.”

Section 4 of the act has not been implemented at all, she said.Editor of
Dalit Voice VT Rajshekar Shetty, said the Dalit community has never
been able to be a part of this technology (community radio). 
He said it is untouchable, unthinkable and inaccessible for them.

Nikhil Dey of Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sanghatan said, 
“RTI Act is not about corruption but about questioning power.”
We also need to understand information in a much wider sense.
“Information is also voice,” he added.The conference was attended 
by around 240 delegates from Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Philippines,
Cambodia and several other Asian countries.
‘Welfare benefits not reaching beneficiaries’High court Judge, 
Justice DV Shylendra Kumar, on Saturday said that the benefits of the
various welfare schemes introduced by the state government and the
Centre are not reaching the beneficiaries.

He was speaking at the
workshop on ‘Right to Information Act for the principals, lecturers
and students of law colleges’ at Nyaya Degula, as part of the legal
literacy programme of the Karnataka State Legal Services
Authority.

Kumar said that awareness should be created among
law students about the RTI Act regarding how the provisions of the
act can be used as a tool and as an effective machinery to fight corruption.

Alert citizen uses RTI to nail postal delay

 Anil Singh,  13 February 2010

MUMBAI: Millions crib about snail mail but one aggrieved
consumer used the Right To Information Act (RTI)
to hold the postal departmentaccountable for delay
and to refund aggrieved customers promptly




Thanks to Dahisar resident Kishanlal Mittal, the Secretary, 
Department of Posts, has been told to issue instructions to
make it mandatory for every Speed Post Centre in the
country to prominently display its delivery norms.

The instructions came in an order by Central Information 
Commissioner (CIC) Deepak Sandhu on January 27, 2010.

The bureaucrat heading the postal department has also been
directed to ensure that there are adequate telephone lines and
manpower available to takecomplaints on telephone.
Emails should be responded to promptly with an assurance
that the complaint will be resolved in 7-10 days, says the order.

To ensure that the customer is not made to run from pillar
to post for the refund, the order says that the booking centre
should inform the complainant regarding his refund and ensure
that he\she does not have to make multiple trips to the post
office to lodge a complaint and claim refund.

Mittal's experience is that 90 % of parcels sent by
Speed Post reach late and that one has to wait for
six months to get a refund for delayed delivery.

He is not the only one to say that. Last year, Mahim resident 

Milind Mulay found out using the RTI that 

27,774 Speed Post items booked from the

Western suburbs of Mumbai did not reach addresses

in Mumbai in time.

Last August, when an important document Mittal had sent to
Kanpur by Speed Post reached four days late, he used the
RTI to seek answers for questions pertaining to delivery norms
of Speed Post, grievance redressal mechanism and refund in
case of delayed delivery.

Since he was not satisfied by the answers he got from the
central principal information officer, Mittal appealed to the
first appellate authority. Here, too, he was disappointed with
the reply and the matter went to the
Central Information Commission, New Delhi.

On January 27, a hearing was held through video conferencing,
where Mittal was represented by his son, Girish. Girish
complained that Speed Post centres across the country
do not display their delivery norms.

Agreeing with him, CIC Deepak Sandhu said that there
is a wide gap between promise and performance when it
comes to Speed Post. She noted in her order that while the
customer is charged the full fees for an upgraded service,
the exact nature of the service is not made transparent to him\her.

The secretary, department of posts, has been told to
ensure compliance of the order in accordance with
section 25(5) of the RTI Act, 2005.

How the law works ?


The secretary, department of posts, has been told by the 

Central Information Commissioner Deepak Sandhu to ensure 

compliance of her order in accordance with section 25(5) of the RTI Act, 2005.

This section says: ``If it appears to the Central Information Commission or
State Information Commission, as the case may be, that the practice of a
public authority in relation to the exercise of its functions under this Act
does not conform with the provisions or spirit of this Act,
it may give to the authority a recommendation specifying the
steps which ought, in its opinion, to be taken for promoting such conformity.''

ONLINE RTI APPLICATIONS FOR NRIS!

New Delhi, February 15, 2010
Deccan Herald


 

To make it easy for NRIs to file RTI applications, 

the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs has asked

government departments to provide a link on their websites

for receiving online applications and appeals.

The ministry has written to Department of Personnel and Training,

nodal department for RTI affairs and Ministry of External Affairs to 

make guidelines in this regard and make necessary changes in the Act.

Its website has a link facilitating reception of online applications.

According to the proposal mooted by the ministry, 

an NRI will now be able to deposit Rs 10 as RTI fee in

the equivalent local currency at the Indian Mission abroad 

and send their application through email to the concerned 

public information officer informing about deposit of fee.

"NRIs (Non-Resident Indians) are entitled to seek information

from Ministries/Departments of Government of India/States

under the RTI Act. 

 In the absence of appropriate arrangement

of deposit of requisite fee, they are finding it difficult to seek information,"

G Gurucharan, Joint Secretary at the 

Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs wrote to DoPT.

It was a difficult task for the NRIs to file RTI applications 

seeking information, as there is no mechanism for online

applications. The deposit of fee was also a difficult matter

as there is no provision in the Act for submitting it in the 

currency of any othercountry.

Now, NRIs submit their RTI applications at Indian missions

abroad which forward it to officials concerned but fee was 

accepted only in Indian currency. The fee can be paid either

in cash or in valid instruments like postal order, demand draft etc.

It was difficult for NRIs to arrange such instrument abroad

leaving them no option but to physically go to the Indian 

mission and submit fee in cash along with application.

An RTI applicant Commodore Lokesh Batra made a 

complaint before the Central Information Commission highlighting the plight of NRIs.

Batra had also raised the issue during the annual

convention convened by the Commission in October

last year, which elicited positive reaction from activists 

and commissioners. After getting complaint from Batra

, the Commission had sought views of the Ministry of 

Overseas Affairs and Ministry of External Affairs.

The Ministry of Overseas Affairs in its submission said, 

"payment of fee for seeking information has to be decided

by the Ministry of External Affairs...As regards first and 

second appeal from abroad, matter has been taken up 

with the Department of Personnel and Training".