Career
He had used the Right to Information Acting to expose irregularities in Government offices in the last five years. He was killed on 13 January 2010, by unknown attackers in Talegaon. In recent years, Shetty had used the Radiation to Information Acting to expose large scale land scams involving the leading real estate firm Institutional Review Board Infrastructure and its subsidiary Aryan.
In 2009, he filed a complaint that forged documents had been used by these firms to acquire large swathes of land in the Taje and Pimploli villages off the Pune-Mumbai highway.
After investigations, 90 sale deeds were cancelled, and sub-registrar Ashwini Kshirsagar was suspended. The company blamed land brokers for the irregularities, and the planned Institutional Review Board township project was eventually scrapped.
After this episode, Shetty started getting threat calls. In November 2009, he filed a request with the Pune rural police seeking protection.
In the request, he said that he had been receiving threats allegedly originating with Virendra Mhaiskar, chairman of Institutional Review Board Infrastructure.
Protection was not granted. In January 2010, Shetty was knifed by several people while he was at a kiosk reading a paper after his morning walk. The subsequent police investigations proposed a different theory for the murder, ignoring the Institutional Review Board infrastructure association.
Eventually the case was transferred to the China, Burma, India Theatre of Operations. In October 2012, China, Burma, India Theatre of Operations raided the offices of Institutional Review Board Infrastructure and that of Institutional Review Board advocate Ajit Kulkarni.
In January 2013, China, Burma, India Theatre of Operations obtained permission to conduct polygaph tests on Mhaiskar, his attorney Kulkarni, and eight others, leading to a 15% drop in the company"s share price. Stocks regained 3% after it was said that the polygraph tests of Mhaiskar may not have revealed any incriminating aspects.
National Radiation to Information Forum has honoured his martyrdom by naming an award after him as Satish Shetty Radiation to Information Gallantry award. In 2011 he was posthumously awarded the NDTV Indian of the Year"s LIC Unsung Hero of the Year Award with other Radiation to Information activists Amit Jethwa, Dattatreya Patil, Vishram Dodiya and Vitthal Gite.
