NHRC sends notice to Maharashtra chief Secretary, DGP over RTI activist's suicide

The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has taken suo motu cognizance of a media report that an RTI activist named Vilas Dattatrey Baravakar, aged 53 years, committed suicide and who was found hanging at his residence in Chakan, Pune on March 25 of this year.

Reportedly, in the suicide note, he has alleged that several prominent politicians and top serving and retired officers of Indian Police Service (IPS) in Maharashtra were harassing him.

A day before his suicide, Vilas Dattatrey Baravakar had gone to Khed Tehsildar Officer in connection with his work and after returning to his house in the evening he had asked his guard Suresh Jadhav, a police constable, to go back to police station. He had written the suicide note on a stamp paper of Rs.100.

Issuing notices to the Chief Secretary and Director General of Police (DGP), Government of Maharashtra, calling for a report in the matter within two weeks, the Commission has observed that the contents of the report, if true, raise a serious issue of violation of human rights of an RTI activist.