Organic Farmer Killed Mere Hours After Protesting Against Illegal Toxic Waste Dumping
by Michael Graham Richard, Ottawa, Canada 
on 11.13.08
It's Dangerous Being Green in India
It can be dangerous to fight polluters. This story reminds me of many others that I've read in a book called "The War Against the Greens".
It all started when Challa Krishnamurthy, a 60-year-old organic farmer from Gowribidanur, India, noticed that a local distillery and sugarcane factory was dumping toxic waste on his property. "He had alerted the Pollution Control Board and a dozen agencies including the government and police, but all came to naught." That's when he decided that the only way to fight back was to alert the media. That probably cost him his life. Read on for more details.
From DNAIndia:
It was then that Krishnamurthy sought the help of the media on Monday and he had arranged to bring some photographers and press reporters to Gowribidanur. As he was explaining to the lensmen where the factory trucks were dumping the perilous sludge with impunity, a truck driver gesticulated at him with a revolver.
On the same day, a few hours before meeting the media, he was shot. The police has arrested a suspect, but the damage is already done, and this murder will certainly have a chilling effect on others who are in similar situations to mr Krishnamurthy.
Via DNAIndia, PlanetSave
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That's horrible!
That's terrible. At least in the U.S. your chances of being murdered for protesting pollution are fairly small. I wonder if it was sponsored directly by the polluting company, or whether it was an employee acting on his/her own out of fear for their job. From the apparent lack of interest by the government, I suppose we'll never know for sure.
This is disgraceful news from India and if that country's government wants to show that it means business, it needs to investigate the case and then try and prosecute every one of the murderers and their bosses and throw the book at them if found guilty.
Failure to do this would make India look like a banana republic.
If you think that's bad; greens want to spread toxic sewage sludge(oops! "biosolids") directly onto crop lands that supply our food.
@Soylent - a man has been murdered and you're worried about using fertilizer on crops. Very odd.
Soylent,
I hope you are joking. What do you think happens to poop? It just stays on the earth forever stinking and polluting? If that were the case we'd be mile high in our own excrement. These "bio-solids" you are so ignorant about, could not even be classified as "poop" since they are so treated, decomposed, and baked in the sun anyways.
I'm guessing composting is outta the question for you. Who on earth would put rotting food materials in their garden?!?!?!!?
That last bit should read more like...
"The police has arrested a suspect, but the damage is already done, and this murder could bring more to defend the Earth as Mr. Krishnamurthy."