Satyendra K. Dubey, the son of Bageshwari Dubey and Phulamati Devi, was born at the village of Shahpur in the Siwan district of Bihar, India. The family of five girls and two boys subsisted on a small piece of land, and Bageshwari also held a low-paying clerical position in a nearby sugar mill. Until the age of 15 he studied at the Gang Baksh Kanodiya High School Shahpur and joined junior college at Allahabad, about three hundred kilometers away. Living away from home was a considerable drain on the meager resources of his family. However, he pursued his dream of becoming an engineer, and was admitted to the Civil Engineering Department of IIT Kanpur in 1990, the first person from his village to enter an IIT. He graduated with an excellent academic record in 1994. Subsequently, he did his M. Tech (Civil Engg.) from IT-BHU in 1996.

Professional Life
For some time, Dubey worked at the Ministry of Surface Transport in Delhi, before he was selected for the Indian Engineering Service (IES), India's top engineering bureaucracy. While at the ministry he once called the police when offered a bribe. In July 2002 he was employed by the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI). Dubey became the Assistant Project Manager at Koderma, Jharkhand, responsible for managing a part of the Aurangabad-Barachatti section of National Highway 1 (The Grand Trunk Road). This highway was part of the Golden Quadrilateral (GQ) Corridor Project, the Prime Minister's baby, which aimed to connect the metros of the country by four-lane limited-access highways totalling 14,000 km, at an overall cost more than USD 10 billion. During this period, he got the contractor of the project to suspend three of his engineers after exposing serious financial irregularities. At one point, he had the contractor rebuild six kilometers of under-quality road, a huge loss for the road contract mafia.

Exposing Corruption
The GQ project had strict controls to ensure that the construction work would be carried on by experienced firms with proper systems. A second independent contract was given for supervision of the project. However, Dubey discovered that the contracted firm, Larsen and Toubro, had been quietly subcontracting the actual work to smaller low-technology groups, controlled by the local mafia. When he wrote to his boss, NHAI Project Director SK Soni, and to Brig Satish Kapoor, engineer overlooking the supervision, there was no action. According to the case file after his murder (FIR), Dubey had been facing several threats following his action against corruption at Koderma. A subsequent FIR filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) named both Soni and Kapoor. In August 2003 when he was transferred to Gaya, a transfer which he opposed since he felt that it did not serve the interests of NHAI.

At Gaya, he exposed large-scale flouting of NHAI rules regarding sub-contracting and quality control. At this time he took a departmental test and was promoted as deputy general manager, which made him eligible to take charge as project director. Since there was no project director's post in Gaya, he was likely to be posted to Koderma soon. There was widespread sentiment (based on their pattern of operation), that the criminal nexus, opposed to having him as director, may have been behind his murder.

Meanwhile, faced with the possibility of high-level corruption within the NHAI, Dubey wrote directly to the Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, detailing the financial and contractual irregularities in the project. While the letter was not signed, he attached a separate bio-data so that the matter would be taken more seriously. Despite a direct request that his identity be kept secret and its sensitive content that pointed fingers at some of his superiors, the letter along with bio-data was forwarded immediately to the Ministry for Road Transport. Dubey also sent the same letter to the Chairman, NHAI. Soon Dubey received a reprimand: the vigilance office of NHAI officially "cautioned" Dubey for the impropriety of writing a letter directly to the Prime minister. In the process, through connections in the NHAI and the Ministry, it is likely that the letter may have reached the criminal nexus running the highway construction projects in Bihar. Following the event, pressure is mounting in India to incorporate a Whistleblower Law."A dream project of unparalleled importance to the Nation but in reality a great loot of public money because of very poor implementation at every state." wrote Dubey. Finally, he ends: "I have written all these in my individual capacity. However, I will keep on addressing these issues in my official capacity in the limited domain within the powers delegated to me," the letter said.

On November 27, 2003, Dubey was returning from a wedding in Varanasi, and called his driver to meet him at the station. He reached Gaya railway station at three in the morning, and found that the his car was not able to come because of a battery malfunction. It appears that at this point Dubey decided to take a rickshaw home. When he didn’t reach home, his driver went to look for him and found him dead by the side of the road in the suburb of A.P. Colony. He had been shot.
The news ignited tremendous public hue and cry. The matter was raised in Parliament, and the Prime Minister shifted the onus of investigation from the Bihar Police (who might themselves be implicated), to the CBI. The CBI registered a case against unknown persons under 120-B (criminal conspiracy) and 302 (murder) of Indian Penal Code and various provision under Arms Act on December 14 2003.

Who ordered the murder
It is possible that Dubey may have been the victim of a simple robbery during which Mantu Kumar shot him, as alleged in the case filed by CBI. However, given the death and disappearance of several witnesses and the startling escape of the prime accused, there is wide-spread speculation that vested interests may have engaged the criminals who actually pulled the trigger. As for the GQ project, the Supreme Court is currently overlooking investigations into the corruption charges initially raised by the Dubey letter. Several official have been indicted and a technical team is overseeing the actual construction.Also, as of September 2005, news reports indicated that the law ministry was about to introduce legislation to protect whistleblowers. Meanwhile, on 10 February 2006, a 600 meter stretch of the highway connecting Kolkata to Chennai subsided into the ground, opening up ten meter gorges near Bally, West Bengal. This stretch had been completed a year back by a multinational firm, selected after global tendering.

Legacy

Dubey's murder drew several protests in India and abroad, especially by the media. Student and Alumni bodies of IITs took the lead in raising this issue. S. K. Dubey Foundation for Fight Against Corruption in India was launched to systematically fight against corruption. IIT Kanpur instituted an annual award in his name, Satyendra K Dubey Memorial Award, to be given to an IIT alumnus for displaying highest professional integrity in upholding human values. Arvind Kejriwal, a recipient of this award, went on to receive the Ramon Magsaysay Award as well. Indian Express had also announced a fellowship in the name of Dubey.
Satyendra Dubey was recognised posthumously by several awards, which included the Whistleblower of the year award from the London-based Index on Censorship, the Transparency International's Annual integrity award and the Service Excellence award from the All India Management Association.