Delhi High Court: While hearing the matter of compensation to the victims of Hashimpura massacre, the Division Bench of Gita Mittal and R.K.Gauba, JJ. directed the State of Uttar Pradesh to expedite the matter of disbursement of compensation.
Ms Vrinda Grover, counsel for the intervener/National Human Rights Commission’s contention was that the State had not placed the complete documents on record and where the applicant had sought the CB-CID enquiry report into the incident of 1987, it had filed a document relating to an inquiry conducted in 1994, which was not brought on record. The plea of non-availability of records had to be explained by the State as to their whereabouts. The State was directed to file an affidavit within four weeks.
The AAG submitted that every person who had been disbursed such ex gratia compensation by the State, would also be entitled to compensation under the Victim Compensation Scheme of the Legal Services Authority. The Court observed that it was not possible for this court to undertake the exercise of identifying the victims at this stage. However, it cannot be denied that the matter of disbursement of compensation required to be undertaken with expedition. In view thereof, it directed the State of UP to place the list/full details of the victims/family of the victims to whom compensation had been disbursed in respect of the incident in question before the Secretary of the Meerut Legal Services Authority within a period of 15 days from the date of order.
The Court’s attention was also drawn to the extreme variation between the compensation envisaged under the State Scheme when compared with the guidelines issued in the Central Victim Compensation Scheme to which Mr Zafaryab Jilani AAG assured the court that an exercise will be undertaken to revisit the UP State Victim Compensation Scheme, identifying the reasons for the variation in the victim compensation proposed in the Central Guidelines and the State Scheme and explore the possibility to remove the differential. [Zulfikar Nasir v. State of Uttar Pradesh, 2016 SCC OnLine Del 4608, order dated August 4, 2016]
