NEW DELHI: Thanks to Com: ‘missioner of Police Nikhil Kumar, 700 families affected ‘in the 1984 rots will find themselves robbed of their share of ‘compensation. Mr. Kumar has written to the Riot cell of Delhi Police to identify the widows of the 1984 riot victims to expedite the process of giving them compensation of Rs3, 3 lakh. Ne ‘Kumar, in a letter on August 8, 1996, directed the Riot cell to identify the widows of victims of the 1984 riots for the compensation. He, however, forgot to mention about the next of the kin of the victims, thus eliminating those who were unmarried then and widows who passed away after the riots. There are about 700 such families. The letter further says, “The widows should be helped to file documents like death certificates and should be given help in getting compensation as early as possible.” The widows, around 2,000, had to be identified, the documents filed and the report submitted to the CP by August 16. The Riot cell has begun the exercise to identify the widows and will apparently not identify the victims® families without widows. “We will strictly go by the CP’s letter, a ‘senior police official said. The Riot cell, has apparently requested for an extension to submit the report since “such a huge exercise cannot be completed in eight days.” The exercise involves mammoth effort as there are thousands of documents and widows. Many of the widows have migrated to Punjab, Rajasthan or Uttar Pradesh and many of them are dead. With so limited manpower, it is not possible to complete it in such a short time, sources said.
The Delhi High Court, in a judgment on July 6, 1996, had ordered that all the widows and family members of the 1984 riots be given compensation of Rs 3.5 lakh within four months. Justice Singh had criticized the State Government for having paid not more than Rs 20,000 as compensation to each widow.
Article extracted from this publication >> August 21, 1996
