A Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) case against celebrated environmental lawyer Ritwick Dutta is replete with factual errors and misrepresentations but will nevertheless have a chilling effect on environmental litigation in India, experts said.

A core allegation in a first information report (FIR) filed by the CBI against Dutta, 48, on 19 April 2023 is that he uses foreign funds to “take down India’s existing or proposed coal projects”. If found guilty of the charges made, Dutta faces a jail term of up to a year, under the law, or a fine or both.

The offences are "compoundable" though, which means a penalty can be paid, usually a percentage of the foreign contribution received. This means the government can only launch prosecution if the person declines to pay the penalty.

The FIR lists no case where either Dutta in his personal capacity or the trust he co-founded, Legal Initiative for Forests and Environment (LIFE), acted as a petitioner, applicant or appellant before any court or tribunal.

The LIFE trust, founded in 2008, won the 2021 Right Livelihood Award, also called the ‘Alternative Nobel’. Dutta is one of three trustees at LIFE. The others are Rahul Choudhary, a lawyer, and Rakesh Kumar Singh, a wildlife management expert and a member of the state board for wildlife, union territory of Ladakh.

In a statement, Dutta said that neither him nor LIFE had ever been a litigant in any legal case.

It is in his personal capacity as a lawyer, with his own proprietorship firm, that Dutta represents a host of farmers, forest-dwelling communities and fisherfolk, other non-governmental organisations and even retired bureaucrats, Dutta said in this October 2021 interview to Article 14.

Quoting a complaint from Jeetendar Chadha, a director in the union home ministry, the CBI says Dutta received Rs 41 lakh as “foreign contribution” in 2013-14.

The CBI claims Dutta then created a proprietorship firm which received Rs 22 crore from Earth Justice, an American advocacy group, as professional receipt “to take down India's existing or proposed coal projects.”

Dutta’s proprietorship, called Lawyers Initiative for Forests and the Environment, was founded in 2009, not after 2013-14, as the CBI claims.

The CBI charge also includes allegations against LIFE, the trust, which is named as second accused in the FIR, alongside Dutta as the first accused. It says the trust transferred the foreign contributions it received to other non-governmental organisations (NGOs), which, the CBI says, violates the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act, 2010 (FCRA).

In his complaint, Chadha from the union home ministry alleges that “EJ and LIFE were complicit in bringing [foreign contribution] into India “for funding and targeting and stalling development projects, which, he says, is an FCRA violation affecting the “economic security” of India.

Article 14 sought comment from Earth Justice but there was no response. We will update this copy if they do respond.

Over the last five years, the union government has cancelled FCRA licences of over 6,500 non-governmental organisations (NGOs). In April 2022, the Supreme Court upheld amendments made by the government in November 2020 to the FCRA.

“… uncontrolled flow of foreign contribution has the potential of impacting the sovereignty and integrity of the nation, its public order and also working against the interest of the general public,” said the Supreme Court.

The FCRA is among three laws that an international human-rights body—of which India’s National Human Rights Commission is a member—has cited as affecting “civil liberties and fundamental rights”.