He turned a social activist after bitter experience with police

“In 2006,using the RTI Act,he exposed Krushna Karke,former city president of the Talegaon Municipal Council (TMC),who had built a bungalow on railway land in 2003. This led to the structure being demolished in 2007. This also led to a hue and cry in the political circles. He did not stop at that; during the same year,he took on an influential builder who had illegally built a residential and commercial complex near Talegaon railway station. He used RTI to get information on land and building permissions,” said advocate Sushilkumar Pise who was associated with Shetty for the past five years.

“In 2008,he got information under RTI and advised aggrieved parties to register cases against Nitin Sable,member of Pune Zilla Parishad who had illegally acquired 11 acres of land at Aade village in Maval Taluka; the case is being heard in the sessions court,” Sandeep said.

“Last year,using RTI,he exposed the nexus between Talegaon municipal council officials and a private businessman who built Vaishali Mangal Karlaya,a marriage hall in Talegaon,on 30 gunthas of land illegally by encroaching two plots. This also led to the suspension of R D Shinde who used to work for the water supply department of the Talegaon municipal corporation,as he had illegally given water connection to the marriage hall. Rama Sarode,the owner of the marriage hall,had recently attacked him,following which Shetty had registered a non-cognisable offence against him,” said Arun Mane,Shetty’s friend for the past two decades.

“In 2008,Shetty exposed a ration shop owner who had made 200 fake ration cards and was siphoning off food grains. His licence was cancelled. When the food and civil supplies department restored the licence,Shetty filed a case in the high court. In all these cases,information was not easy to come by,so Shetty and his friends used RTI to get information from various government officers,collate them and collect proof against the offenders and then go public with the case,” Mane added.

Around the same time,Shetty moved the RTI to come up with the biggest expose of his life — a scam involving around 3,000 acres of land in Maval taluka in which many big companies allegedly benefited due to their collusion with officials in the local town planning department.

“It highlighted the use of forged documents to acquire land along the Mumbai-Pune Expressway. A sub-registrar was also suspended after the state government instituted an inquiry in the case,” Sandeep said.