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ShareBANGALORE: If the Pollution Control Board and the police had done their bounden duty, the 60-year-old organic farmer and environment lover Challa Krishnamurthy would be alive today.
He was shot dead in broad daylight on Monday.Krishnamurthy was not a globe-trotting environmental intellectual but a humble farmer who set up a 20-acre organic farm in Gowribidanur, some 71 kilometres from Bangalore, and wanted it to be a model for others on how to grow healthy food in natural way if man would not contaminate the good earth with chemical sludge and pesticides. Only, the nearby distillery and sugarcane factory would not allow him. The constant dumping of untreated sludge in farms, including his own, made his life miserable. He had alerted the Pollution Control Board and a dozen agencies including the government and police, but all came to naught.
It was then that Krishnamurthy sought the help of the media on Monday and he had arranged to bring some photographers and press reporters to Gowribidanur. As he was explaining to the lensmen where the factory trucks were dumping the perilous sludge with impunity, a truck driver gesticulated at him with a revolver.
A couple of hours before he was scheduled to meet the press persons the same day, he fell prey to bullets of criminals. On Tuesday (yesterday) a bandh at the instance of Karnataka Rakshana Vedike (NG) was observed in Gowribidanur in protest against the killing. The police have arrested one man on charge of assault, and there stands the matter as of now.
There has been a deafening silence on the matter from some 300 odd organisations and voluntary movements on eco-preservation in Karnataka. When DNA contacted, only a few of them reacted while most others pleaded lack of information on the man and the cause. Greens in Mysore and Mangalore too, when contacted, refused to say anything about it as they said they do not have the facts.
The Eco-Watch Chairman and film maker Suresh Heblikar said he knew for sure how the groundwater of Gowribidanur was totally destroyed by the unbridled flow of untreated molasses sludge. "If you take Bangalore, for instance, the environment is destroyed. You can not be fooled by the aerial view of a patch of greenery over the city. We are not reacting to them hard enough, and the governments made of varied caste-creed-faith combinations can not be expected to act impartially."
Leo Saldhana, a young environmentalist, said killing of protesting voices had assumed a pattern in Karnataka. He cited the barbaric killing of a prohibitionist, Babu Krishnamurthy, in Ramanagara a few months ago. He was gunned down on the road, in the midst of traffic while sister Celina who was travelling with him got hurt. Babu only advocated prohibition saying liquor was destroying poor families. "I myself got beaten up more than once while protesting against the rape of environment. We, the like-minded friends who love environment, are discussing on forming pan-south Indian environment solidarity."
A senior Pollution Control Board official said the Board had received the late Krishnamurthy's complaint and had "forwarded" it to "our regional office." It was a month ago. If more details are needed, only chairman or member-secretary can give. And, chairman is on foreign-tour.
