Satya Prakash Choubey Part -1: Life, Career & The Expose

A true hero! Someone who trusted in trust. Someone who thought that he could bring the desired change to our system. Someone who wanted to live to serve the nation for long. A fighter and a true Indian, Mr. Choubey dreamt of a India where there will be great infrastructure just like any developed nation. He dreamt of good roads. He thought of himself as a difference maker. 

The reality is that he was a difference maker. Although he passed away but he left a legacy for the future generations. Something that we all should look at and learn from. 

He proved that there are still people present in our corrupt system who hold themselves upright and are ready for the ultimate sacrifice. This post focuses and pays tribute to a national hero.  

Satya Parkash Choubey[Satyendra Dubey] (1973 - 27 November 2003) was a project director at the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI). He was murdered in Gaya, Bihar after fighting corruption in the Golden Quadrilateral highway construction project. 

Satya Parkash Choubey, the son of Bageshwari Dubey and Phulamati Devi, was born at the village of Sahpur in the Siwan district of Bihar, India. The family of five girls and two boys subsisted on a small piece of land, and Bageshwari also held a low-paying clerical position in a nearby sugar mill.Until the age of 15 he studied at the Gang Baksh Kanodiya High School in Sahpur and then joined junior college at Allahabad, about three hundred kilometers away. Living away from home was a considerable drain on the meager resources of his family. However, he pursued his dream of becoming an engineer, and was admitted to the Civil Engineering Department of IIT Kanpur in 1990, the first person from his village to enter an IIT. He graduated with an excellent academic record in 1994. Subsequently, he did his M. Tech (Civil Engg.) from IT-BHU in 1996. 

He was selected for the Indian Engineering Service (IES) in 1996, India's top engineering bureaucracy and joined ministry of surface transport. While at the ministry he once called the police when offered a bribe In July 2002 he was employed by the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI). Dubey became the Assistant Project Manager at Koderma, Jharkhand, responsible for managing a part of the Aurangabad-Barachatti section of National Highway 2 (The Grand Trunk Road). This highway was part of the Golden Quadrilateral (GQ) Corridor Project, the Prime Minister's initiative, which aimed to connect many of the country major cities by four-lane limited-access highways totalling 14,000 km, at an overall cost more than USD 10 billion. During this period, Dubey got the contractor of the project to suspend three of his engineers after exposing serious financial irregularities. At one point, he had the contractor rebuild six kilometers of under-quality road, a huge loss for the road contract mafia. 

Meanwhile, faced with the possibility of high-level corruption within the NHAI, Dubey wrote directly to the Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, detailing the financial and contractual irregularities in the project. While the letter was not signed, he attached a separate bio-data so that the matter would be taken more seriously. Despite a direct request that his identity be kept secret and despite the letter's sensitive content, accusing some of Dubey's superiors, the letter along with bio-data was forwarded immediately to the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways. Dubey also sent the same letter to the Chairman of the NHAI. Soon Dubey received a reprimand: the vigilance office of NHAI officially cautioned Dubey for the impropriety of writing a letter directly to the Prime minister. In the process, through connections in the NHAI and the Ministry, it is likely that the letter may have reached the criminal nexus running the highway construction projects in Bihar. Following the event, pressure is mounting in India to incorporate a Whistleblower Law. 

The letter said the NHAI officials showed a great hurry in giving mobilisation advance to selected contractors for financial consideration. "In some cases the contractors have been given mobilisation advance just a day after signing the contract agreement." 

"The entire mobilisation advance of 10 per cent of contract value, which goes up to Rs 40 crore (USD 10 million) in certain cases, are paid to contractors within a few weeks of award of work but there is little follow up to ensure that they are actually mobilised at the site with the same pace, and the result is that the advance remains lying with contractors or gets diverted to their other activities," it said. 

Dubey also highlighted the problems of sub-contracting by the primary contractors like Larsen and Toubro. 

"Though the NHAI is going for international competitive bidding to procure the most competent civil contractors for execution of its projects, when it comes to actual execution, it is found that most of the works, sometimes even up to 100 per cent are subcontracted to petty contractors incapable of executing such big projects," he said. Everyone in the NHAI is aware of the phenomenon of subcontracting but looked the other way. "A dream project of unparalleled importance to the Nation but in reality a great loot of public money because of very poor implementation at every state." wrote Dubey. Finally, he ends: "I have written all these in my individual capacity. However, I will keep on addressing these issues in my official capacity in the limited domain within the powers delegated to me," the letter said.

Part - 2: Murder, Investigation and Legacy.............to follow tomorrow!