'He was passionate for life and committed to all his passions, which included singing and honesty towards friends.'
LUCKNOW: "Is this the country we are aspiring to live in and walk hand in hand towards better future?" a visibly and deeply traumatised professor Debashish Chatterjee of IIM Lucknow asks when questioned about murder of his student S Manjunath. The Indian Oil Corporation sales officer was gunned down by goons at the outskirts of Sitapur district on Sunday.
Chatterjee remembers Manjunath as somebody who represented a select few who still believed in the value system, integrity and clear conscience. "As a student of my 2003 batch leadership classes, from the beginning I was able to mark him out as different. He had that fire within him to make a difference to the society and that is the reason I decided to be his personal mentor."
He was passionate for life and committed to all his passions, which included singing and honesty towards friends, the professor added. In almost a choked voice Chatterjee further said that what pained him more was that when Manjunath had come to meet him and his family recently, he had expressed his fear for life. He talked in detail about how mafia is posing as more than a real threat for him in the area where he is operating and was even contemplating about his future, as he belonged to middle class with dependent family members, said Chatterjee.