M A I N   N E W S

Families reject compensation
CCDP to approach SC
Tribune News Service

AMRITSAR, Dec 13 — The Committee for Coordination on Disappearances in Punjab (CCDP) has decided to challenge the award of Rs 1 lakh by the National Human Rights Commission to each of the families of 18 militants’ killed in police encounters.

Addressing a joint press conference, Mr Ram Narayan Kumar, Mr Amrik Singh Muktsar, Mr Narain Singh and Mr Harshinder Singh said this was the fist instance in the world when victims had refused compensation as they wanted to expose state terrorism. They said if the state was not ready to accept that somebody was responsible for “killing of innocent persons” awarding compensation was ‘absurd’. The members of the CCDP condemned the clarification by the National Human Rights Commission that it was yet to determine the quantum of compensation. This was a typical example of ‘legal subterfuge’.

They said the quantum of compensation was not the principal issue. “The proposal of compensation without admission of liability is baseless”, they said.

Members of the CCDP said the NHRC should either act ‘honestly’ in awarding compensation to all victims or wind up its office. They warned if they failed to get justice from the apex court, they would continue their legitimate struggle in this regard.

The CCDP alleged that the NHRC had deliberately put forward technical ‘hurdles’ to ignore ‘genuine’ cases of disappearance during the days of terrorism in Punjab. The members said when more than 500 cases of disappearance had been identified by the CBI, it was odd that compensation was being cleared to families of only 18 victims.

They claimed that more than 2000 such cases had been identified by the CCDP and many more were being investigated into.

They alleged that there were yet more cases of persons having been thrown into rivers, whose bodies had not been found.

Many families were afraid of the police and reluctant to fill up forms for getting compensation. The NHRC had not given proper publicity ‘deliberately’ on the applications they alleged.

Members of all 18 families who were present were unanimous in their decision not to accept charity from the government,” but to seek justice.

The CCDP head pointed out that it was a settled principle in public law that victims of abuse of power had three fundamental rights — right to know, right to justice and right to reparations. Unfortunately by simply awarding compensation and closing the matter, the NHRC was not doing any justice to the aggrieved families, he said.

Film producer Rizvi held

MUMBAI, Dec 13 (PTI) — The police today claimed to have unravelled a nexus of the underworld with filmdom with the arrest of film producer Nazim Hassan Rizvi for entering into a criminal conspiracy with underworld don Chhota Shakeel to eliminate prominent Hindi movie personalities, including filmmaker Rakesh Roshan.

Rizvi, whose forthcoming film “Chori Chori Chupke Chupke” has been in focus of late for alleged underworld financing and came into glare after suddenly making the big-budget movie, featuring Salman Khan, Rani Mukherjee and Preity Zinta was arrested this morning from his Andheri office, for his nexus with the underworld and for using Chhota Shakeel to pressurise cine stars to act in his film.

The underworld don was also planning an attack on Rakesh Roshan besides issuing threats to the personal assistant of Ajay Devgan to reschedule release of the actor’s forthcoming film, top police sources said.