Imphal, June 15 2009: Late SDO of Kasom Khullen, Dr Thingnam Kishan who was brutally bludgeoned to death by cadres of the NSCN (IM) was among the five personalities nominated for the third edition of the prestigious Manjunath Shanmugam Integrity Awards.

Though the award eluded Dr Th Kishan, the jury and the trust felt that the gravity of the case was strong enough to merit a nomination so that tributes can be paid to him as well as to support his case.

The three member jury included S Gopalkrishnan CEO and MD Infosys Technologies, Rama Bijapurkar, Strategy Consultant and Independent Director on the boards of Infosys Technologies, CRISIL, UTI Bank, Godrej Consumer Products, Entertainment Network (India) Ltd and Give Foundation and Shekhar Gupta, Editor-in-Chief of the Indian Express and CEO Indian Express Group.

The awards distributed on June 13 at IIM Bangalore jointly went to Vinod Adhau (Village Revenue Officer, Anjangjao Surji Taluk of Amaravati district, Maharastra), Jitendra Chaturvedi (founder and chief of DEHAT, a voluntary organisation working in the backward districts of Bahraich district, Indo-Nepal border) and Sanjiv Chaturvedi (Deputy Forest Conservator, Panchkula Haryana).

The award has been instituted in memory of S Manjunath, an alumnus of IIM-Lucknow and a sales officer with the Indian Oil Corporation, who was murdered in 2005 when he took on the oil mafia.

The awards were presented by Ramon Magsaysay awardee Aruna Roy, a social activist.

Other than Dr Kishan, the other nominees were late Manoj Gupta (Executive Engineer, UP), Pankaj Khanna (ex-officer of HPCL), Ashok Khemka (IAS officer Haryana), TR Krishnappa (social activist and farmer, Karnataka).

The three joint winners as well as the nominees were acknowledged for their principled stand.

A citation was also presented to Dr Kishan.

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