Many victims of 1984 riots
still to get compensation
Despite a long wait since November 1984, when mayhem and madness gripped the capital after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's assassination on October 31, and a string of committees set up to look into the unprecedented violence, a large number of families still await compensation.
"The 14th anniversary of the riots falls on Sunday, but till now not one person has been punished for the carnage which claimed 2,733 lives as per the final official records," H S Phoolka, member-secretary of the Justice Narula Committee set up in 1993 by Madan Lal Khurana, then chief minister of Delhi, said.
In the case of Bhajan Kaur vs the Delhi administration, Justice Anil Dev Singh of the Delhi high court had on July 5, 1996, enhanced the compensation amount from Rs 20,000 to Rs 350,000 and directed that the balance Rs 330,000 be paid to the families of those killed within four months.
But Phoolka said a number of families were denied this compensation on "technical grounds" in spite of the Delhi government accepting the judgment and not going in appeal to the Supreme Court.
"The government has wrongly rejected the claim for compensation of those victims for whom an FIR [first information report] of 'missing' was lodged... The enhanced compensation of Rs 3.3 lakh [Rs 330,000] has not been paid in such cases despite the fact that the initial compensation of Rs 20,000 was paid to them," he said.
Phoolka pointed this out to Chief Minister Sushma Swaraj in a letter written on October 23 on behalf of the committee which has been sending its recommendations on the matter to the Delhi government at regular intervals.
Many people whose compensation claims were rejected have approached the high court. In a recent judgment in the case of Surinder Kaur vs the Delhi government, the court directed that since the initial compensation had been paid to her, the enhanced compensation of Rs 330,000 should also be paid to her.
"This judgement should be followed in all such cases so that the hapless victims are not forced to rush to court,''
Phoolka, standing counsel of the central government in the high court and convener of the Citizens' Justice Committee set up after Mrs Gandhi's assassination, suggested the constitution of a one-man commission under a retired district judge to decide the cases where the government has rejected or disputed the claims.
"In no circumstances should a victim's family be forced to go court and incur heavy expenses on litigation," he said.
The trial court has so far sentenced five persons to death for the carnage. The Delhi high court recently confirmed three of them and set aside the other two.
Appeals of the three who have been awarded capital punishment are pending in the Supreme Court, which has confirmed life imprisonment for six others.
"In cases of about 200 people who have been awarded varying sentences ranging from three years to life imprisonment by the trial court, appeals are still pending in the high court," Phoolka said. Evidence is also being examined in cases against some politicians
Explaining how the figure of those killed in the riots was computed, Phoolka, who has fought the cases of many of the victims, said the number of deaths recorded by the police was 1,419 while the Delhi administration had put the toll at 2,310. The Citizens' Justice Committee, an umbrella organisation of several human rights groups, said 3,870 people were killed.
In view of the varying figures, the one-man inquiry commission of Justice Ranganath Misra, then a judge of the Supreme Court, recommended the constitution of a committee to verify the lists supplied by various bodies.
Subsequently, the government appointed the Ahuja Committee that, in its report in 1988, put the number of those killed at 2,733 which has since been accepted as the final official toll, Phoolka said.
Justice Misra had also recommended the constitution of two more committees -- one to inquire into allegations ofnon-registration of criminal cases, particularly in the light of the wide variance in the toll given by police and the Delhi administration, and the other to probe the role of the police.
Four more committees -- the Jain-Banerjee Committee, Potti-Rosha Committee, Jain-Aggarwal committee and Kapoor-Mittal Committee -- were set up before the Narula Committee was constituted in December 1993 under Justice R S Narula, former chief justice of the Punjab and Haryana high Court.
UNI
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