He died fighting for his principles in Gaya, Bihar, on November 27. And Mumbai remembered him on Wednesday with prominent citizens and students of Indian Institute of Technology getting together.

'Did Satyendra Dubey die in vain?' was the question they discussed at the Indian Merchants Chamber.

"I am very happy to see the crowd assembled here to remember him," said B G Deshmukh, former Cabinet Secretary of India. "We as the people of India must ensure that Dubey did not die in vain. We middle class people are not interested in what is happening around us. If there is some corruption happening we tend to ignore it. Corruption has become multi hydra and we need to come together to fight it."

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Dubey was an engineer working with the National Highway Authority of India. He was an alumni of the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology.

At the time of his death Dubey was working on Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's dream project -- the Golden Quadrilateral that envisages joining major cities and towns.

He had sent an anonymous letter to the Prime Minister's Office about misappropriation of project funds in Bihar. He had also mentioned that his name be kept secret. But Dubey's name got out and he had to pay with his life.

"Unfortunately, we as the people of India have no movement to root out corruption," said J F Ribeiro, former Mumbai Police commissioner. "If we were more organised in our society against corruption, Dubey would have never lost his life."

Recalling his experience of combating terrorism in Punjab, Ribeiro said, "People gave up helping the terrorists in Punjab when they found that they were causing problems to their day-to-day life. Only then the government could win the battle in Punjab. Similarly corruption can also be fought if there is public pressure and public will to fight it out."

Raj Nair, chairman of IMC's governance forum, said, "We are planning to keep aside Rs 2.5 million to give awards to people who are good in public governance. All the time, we talk about people who are bad in governance so we thought that we should now recognize people who are doing good job."

Shailesh Gandhi, a social activist, said, "The most outstanding thing about Dubey was that his death has caused a stir in nation's mind. There are 25,000 people who have written letters expressing empathy for his cause. This is just remarkable."

All the speakers were unanimous in stating that an independent inquiry should be held into Dubey's murder and Chief Vigilance Commissioner should find out how his letter was leaked from PMO's office.

The students of IIT, Mumbai, for their part are organising a meet to remember the brave engineer on December 15.

Prateek Singh, a student, told rediff.com: "Whatever happened was wrong. By organising the meet we want to give a message that we want to create a terror free society."

Gaurav Porwal chipped in. "We want to give a message that honesty should not be killed in society and people should not forget men like Dubey. We should always keep his principles in mind and only then we can make our country better in future."