Victims of year-old Delhi blasts await aid

New Delhi: A year after five serial blasts killed 26 in the capital, the ex-gratia payments from the Delhi government are still trickling in. 125 families are still waiting for the promised sum of rupees three lakh. Soon after the blasts, the Centre had promised to pay the survivors or kin, a certain amount of compensation.

The victims or their families still wait on.

Five bombs had ripped through Delhi's Karol Bagh's lane no 42. Many others like - Rama and Krishna Singh - mourn their losses. Rama and Krishna Singh sit at the very spot where they lost their two daughters.

Krishna said, "We were right here when the blast happened. My daughters went unconscious and I lost my eye."

Rama sais, "We have no home. We live here on the pavement. When there's a festival we sell idols."

The Government's memory has faded. No one seems to bother about even those victims whose courage and bereavement was flashed across television screens that day.

A six-year-old girl became the face of the tragedy. The balloon seller who helped avert a blast at Barakhamba road had become Delhi police's poster boy then. But both families have little hope for a decent living.

Their families highlight the plight and the fruitless promises made by government.

The past year may have erased the Delhi serial blasts from government's and public memory but the 125 victims crippled by the blasts and families of the 26 who died cannot afford to dos so.

There are victims like Shakeel who lost a leg and his livelihood to the tragedy.

He is a practicing Muslim himself but shuns the violence perpetrated by terrorists who are bringing shame to a great religion.

"These people do not belong to any religion, there is no place for them in Islam. They are shailtan (Devil personified)," says Shakeel.

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