Click to play videoMumbai: A year may have gone by since the July 11 bombings in Mumbai but 65-year-old Kitab-u-nissa who lost her only son Mohammad Salim in the blasts is still inconsolable.
“I am so devastated that I can't even eat. I am always thinking about my son,” Kitab-u-nissa said and burst into tears.
One might think that life couldn't possibly have got worse for this illiterate widow but bureaucratic delays have ensured that she hasn't even got her compensation from the Maharashtra government.
“To forget my sorrows I went to my village but even there I couldn’t forget my miseries,” an inconsolable Kitab-u-nissa said.
Now, with only bare walls to keep her company, even a one-bedroom flat in Mira Road on the outskirts of Mumbai seems enormous. With loneliness haunting her she sometimes just stands in the passageway of her house hoping that by some miracle her son will walk in.
“Every time she thinks of her son, she starts crying. We try to console her by saying that there is no point in doing so since whatever had to happen has happened,” Kitab-u-nissa’s neighbour, Nasreen said sympathetically.
But Kitab-u-nissa’s woes did not end with her son’s death, as she still hasn't got compensation.
“They (authorities) have sent me from pillar to post. It’s been like this for the past one year,” a dejected Kitab-u-nissa said.
The reason for the delay in compensation is that Salim succumbed to his injuries four days after the bombings.
Kitab-u-nissa was given a cheque of Rs 50,000 when Salim was found grievously injured after the blasts.
But Salim succumbed to his injuries and so his mother duly returned the cheque to the state government but the authorities still haven’t sanctioned the Rs 1 lakh for Salim's death.
When CNN-IBN confronted the state with this fact, Collector of Thane District S S Zhende admitted that there was a problem.
"Since the case was handled by two districts because he was injured and subsequently died, so it took a little time. But we are settling that claim for sure,” Zhende assured.
Soon after CNN-IBN questioned the authorities, the state bureaucracy got into swift action. Within an hour of the visit to the Collector’s office, officials arrived at Kitab-u-nissa’s house to begin the process of disbursing the compensation.
But at the end of the day, the question that one is left asking is why does it take a television channel to get the state machinery rolling?
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