It was Diwali 2010, and the festive message I received from Shehla Masood read: “HAPPY DIWALI IN PENCH - Today nothing can be more exciting than the news of the Pench tigress giving birth to five cubs, and a Saraswati elephant giving birth to a baby elephant calf. Both the mothers and their young ones are safe and healthy.” It was typical of Shehla, her concerns as an animal conservationist and her spontaneously expressed joy of living. Less than a year later, she would be dead, slumped in her car outside her residence in Bhopal.

From Kamayani Bali-Mahabal/Women’s Feature Service

As a Right To Information activist, she was always disturbed by the murders of those who exposed corruption in high places, activists such as Satyendra Dubey, Satish Shetty, Shanmughan Manjunath and Shashidhar Mishra. Little did she know that she would share their fate.

This issue first brought us together a few years ago. Shehla told me she wanted help in starting an online campaign for a whistle blowers law. Being a woman from a minority community, she said she needed the support of committed activists whom she could trust. She also revealed at that point that she was being threatened by the Madhya Pradesh police.

The “accidental” death of the Jhurjhura tigress in the Bandhavgarh reserve on May 18, 2010 spurred Shehla to action. By September her organisation, Udai, had launched a massive signature campaign demanding the culprits behind the tigress’s death be brought to book. They were believed to be influential people. Shehla always came straight to the point. In one meeting I had with her she had raised an important question: “The [Madhya Pradesh] government has been given approximately Rs 2,000 crore over the last five years for tiger conservation. But there have been no tigers in the Panna reserve since 2006. So my dear Kamayani, where is that money?” 

Tough questions

She also made the connection between the larger environment and tiger conservation. She was keen to save the watershed of the Panna tiger reserve and was disturbed by the fact that the Shyamri, one of the cleanest rivers in the country, was being destroyed by illegal mining. The issue went on to become an international one and even figured in Parliament.

“Shehla was an amazing, courageous and gutsy woman who sought transparency and accountability from the system,” says her college friend Ajay Dubey. “She was someone who could be termed as an alert citizen.” Since 2009, Dubey’s organization, Prayatna, has been working with Udai on RTI requests.

Another friend of Shehla’s, and a Bhopal-base journalist, Shiv Karan Singh says “She was one of the strongest voices in the field of tiger conservation.” He says Shehla always managed to annoy bureaucrats and politicians with her information requests and public campaigns. 

"Never afraid"

Shehla’s father, Sultan Masood, says that she was always fearless. “She was a brave child, never afraid of anything. It was a trait that marked her all through her life and helped her to aggressively pursue corruption issues in the state,” he says. He’s now calling on people who supported Shehla and the wildlife for which she fought, “Please do not let the issue die with her death. Shehla continues to need the support of her friends.”

It was not just tigers that took up her time; she was also drawn to other social issues. My last conversation with Shehla was on the Supreme Court judgment in June on the Salwa Judum. She said that we should publicise the judgment as much as possible. She went on to talk about the situation of tribals in Madhya Pradesh. I remember the passion in Shehla’s voice, when she pointed out how tribal people are facing evictions from their forests, despite having lived in them for generations. According to her, they are fighting time and bureaucratic hurdles to realising their claims under the scheduled tribes act. 

That conversation ended with the familiar Shehla line: “We should do something about this.” Sure, Shehla, I said as I bid goodbye, not realising that would be the last time I would talk to her. The signature line on her last mail summed up this great woman, “We think, we have different opinions, we discuss, we form consensus, we identify the best alternative and we move forward.”

Shehla, we will move forward, but we will miss you terribly.