http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Activist-faces-brunt-of-steel-magnates-fury/articleshow/6096632.cms
" RAIPUR: Till Wednesday morning, Ramesh Agrawal was deluged by congratulatory messages. By noon, he started getting calls of concern. As the calls accelerated in the afternoon, the environmentalist did what comes naturally to him: he filed an RTI application asking for details of the FIR the Jindal group had lodged against him.
Jindal Steel and Power Limited has gone to the police accusing Agrawal of extorting money from the company and issuing threats to its senior management.
The fifty five year old activist is the founder of a group called Jan Chetana that monitors mining and industrial projects in Raigarh. Since March, he wrote a series of letters to the Ministry of Environment and Forests drawing its attention to violations by Jindal Power. He alleged that the company had begun construction on the site of its proposed power plant even before getting environmental clearances. The Ministry sent a team to investigate on May 22.
It found the allegations were true. On June 18, MoEF withdrew 'terms of reference' to the project, in effect rejecting the proposal.
Five days later, Sanjeev Chauhan, Senior General Manager of JSPL, registered an FIR against Agrawal, accusing him of demanding five crore rupees from the company.
In a detailed letter to the police, Chauhan claims that Agrawal has a history of extorting money from the Jindals and other corporations. He says Agrawal first contacted Jindal group officials in May 2009 and threatened to disrupt the public hearing for one of its project unless the company paid him 25 lakh rupees. The management negotiated with him and gave his son a shop in a newly constructed complex. But Agrawal demands did not stop. In September, he asked for five crore rupees, a demand he repeated this year in April, just before the company was to hold a public hearing for its proposed power plant. When the company did not pay, Agrawal threatened to kill me, Chauhan states in the letter.
"We received a complaint from Jindal officials on Monday. We did a preliminary investigation and recorded Chauhan's statement as well as the statement of two witnesses. Since the case appeared prima facie true, we filed an FIR on Wednesday" says Rahul Sharma, SP of Raigarh. The charges against Agrawal are extortion and threat to life (Sec 386 and 506 B of Indian Penal Code).
When asked if he was troubled by the serious charges against him, Agrawal said, "I am not troubled. They (Jindals) are troubled, which is why they are doing this".
The police complaint has shocked environmentalists. "This is exactly the tactic American Corporations have used to browbeat environmental activists," said Sunita Narain, Director, Centre for Science and Environment. She said this reminded her of SLAPP or Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation used by companies in America "to shut up individuals who were raising issues of social and environmental concern".
"Ramesh Agrawal of Jan Chetana is well known to the environmental and human rights fraternity. He has been raising issues related to not just a single corporation but several agencies on a very systematic basis," said Kanchi Kohli of Kalpavriksha Environmental Action Group.
Agrawal has a long series of achievements to his credit. In 2009, a PIL filed by him in Delhi High Court resulted in a major amendment to the rules governing environmental clearance. The court made it mandatory for companies to publish their full environmental clearance order in two local newspapers to enable the affected people to access the order and challenge the clearance if need be.
Ritwick Dutta, well known environmental lawyer, who has represented Agrawal in several public interest cases, asked,
"Why has the company filed an FIR against Agrawal after MoEF acted against them? Why did it not go after him earlier?"
When asked why, Sanjeev Chauhan said, "We discussed the matter within the management. We were waiting for the right time". He added that the company "will definitely prove the allegations in court".
Environmentalists say proving allegations against Agrawal will not disprove allegations against the company.
"The Ministry did not rely on Agrawal's word. Its team did due diligence and found Jindal Power had clearly broken the rules," says Narain."
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