Punjab CM announces compensation for the remaining 324 Jodhpur detenues
Punjab CM announces compensation for the remaining 324 Jodhpur detenues
Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Thursday assured compensation for the remaining 325 Jodhpur detenues, at par with the 40 who have been awarded by the Court, while promising to persuade the Central Government to also do the same.
The Chief Minister came out with this assurance while handing over the cheques of the state’s 50% share of the approximately Rs. 4.5 Crore compensation announced by District Court Amritsar for the 40 detenues who had sought judicial relief. The cheques that were paid out today by the state government amounted to Rs. 2,16,44,900.
A total of 365 persons were arrested and detained at Jodhpur jail in the wake of Operation Blue Star in 1984, and were eventually released in 1986. As many as 100 had since died. Of the 40 who had gone to the court, seven had passed away in the interim.
The Chief Minister, while sharing the pain of the detainees, said those who did not go to the court were also entitled to compensation and his government will make the same payment to them too. He expressed the confidence that the Centre would agree to his plea to also contribute its share to the remaining 325 detenues.
His government had been prepared to release the full compensation to the 40 detainees who had won the case in District Court but he was then informed by the Central Government of its decision to release its share too, the Chief Minister told the detainees/survivors who had come to receive their cheques at the Punjab Bhawan here.
Congress MLA from Patti, Harminder Singh, who was also detained after 1984, thanked the Chief Minister for coming to the rescue of the detainees, time and again. He recalled Captain Amarinder’s gesture in visiting the detenues in Nabha prison (where they were initially kept before being shifted to Jodhpur), to give them clothes. The detainees had been kept naked in Nabha prison, said Harminder. -PTC News
