Dhananjay Kumar alias Guddu Kumar

RTI Activist and Human Rights Defender

Bihar

HRDA has issued an urgent appeal to the National Human Rights Commission of India on November 13, 2019, regarding the illegal detention and brutal torture of RTI activist and HRD Mr. Dhananjay Kumar alias Guddu Kumar. Mr. Kumar has been an RTI activist for the past 8 years and has filed over 300 RTI queries mainly to expose irregularities and corrupt practices in the district administration and has been targeted, threatened and intimidated in the past. In the year 2012-13, a case was filed against him for seeking information on food supplies through a PDS distributor from an office of Block Food Supply in Nalanda district.

Sources informed that on November 5, 2019, Dhananjay was picked up when he was on his way to meet   the former ward counselor (parshad) on his bike by SHO Mr. Deepak Kumar from Jhing Nagar Mohalla in Bihar Sharif town at around 8:10 AM, and was not made aware of the grounds or reasons for the same. He was then abducted and first taken to the residence of alleged dealer in illegal arms and ammunitions, Mr. Tinku Gupta Ali Nagar. After this, he was physically assaulted and despite being forced to confess buying arms from Tinku, he refused to do so. Dhananjay was then taken to the Bihar Police Station where he was illegally detained till 10:00 PM and was physically assaulted, beaten up with sticks and tortured with electric shocks on his body.

Dhananjay was only released only after the intervention of local respected people and his family members admitted him in the Sadar Hospital in Bihar Sharif immediately. On November 6, 2019, the doctors at this hospital referred him to get treated in a high specialty hospital for his internal injuries, after which he was taken to the Jeevan Jyoti hospital.