Satyendra Dubey is not dead. There are countless Dubeys across the length and breadth of India, who continue to do what he did: dare to tell the truth and face the consequences. They do this, fully aware that public support will be rare and public memory even shorter. Many of them die pursuing this goal, unsung and forgotten.

Satyendra Dubey, however, was not unsung. The IIT-Kanpur alumni became an instant hero, civil society’s poster boy for courage and integrity. And yet, four years after his murder, he is forgotten today. At best, he has become a martyr, to be remembered once a year on his death anniversary.

The same people who marched the streets to protest his murder, undertook relay fasts, wrote blogs, held public meetings, donated money and expressed outrage that Dubey’s honesty led to his killing, accepted the official CBI version a few months later, that a simple robbery had led to his murder. Apart from a few exceptions, once the CBI charge-sheet was filed in September 2004, no one probed further. The hope for a peoples’ movement for change, for recognising the principles Dubey stood for, for simply getting justice for him, also died.

Today, four years later, the murder-for-robbery case carries on in Patna, no end in sight. The IIT-alumni supported, US-based Satyendra Kumar Dubey Foundation, set up just after his murder, is almost defunct. The Whistle-blowers Act, meant to protect other whistle-blowers like Dubey, is a distant dream. Dubey’s own family and friends have all but given up hope of justice. Years of false hopes, tokenism and frustration have added cynicism to the burden of loss that the family carries with it constantly.

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