Sixteen months after S. Manjunath, an young officer with Indian Oil Corporation, was murdered at Sitapur, Uttar Pradesh, the district court at Lakhimpur Kheri has pronounced as guilty all the eight accused. This is a heartening development. All the more so because this case too could have gone the way of the Jessica Lal and Priyadarshini Mattoo cases in the lower courts, given that three of the witnesses had turned hostile. For Manjunath’s shattered parents, as indeed for this newspaper which has reported extensively on this story, the verdict brings a modicum of satisfaction that justice has been done and fairly quickly at that. Which is more than can be said for executive action on the issues raised by this murder.

This newspaper had recognised the tragedy as one that epitomised both the promise of the India story, and the inherent threats facing it. S. Manjunath, like Satyendra Dubey in 2003, represented GenNext — highly talented, educated and dedicated people who believed in the country’s future. When they confronted corruption they could not, like so many of their counterparts, look the other way and carry on. Dubey put his disquiet down on paper by penning a letter to the prime minister pointing out that his cherished Golden Quadrilateral project entailed, at least in the Gaya stretch, the “great loot of public money”. Manjunath, when he discovered a petrol pump selling adulterated fuel, threatened to revoke its licence. Instead of being rewarded for their courage — a courage to resist the corrupt, a courage that India badly needs — both men paid for it with their lives.

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