Nagaland Govt. announces ex-gratia to Dimapur police firing victims

Kohima:The Nagaland government has announced an ex-gratia of Rs 1 lakh to the family of the victim killed in the police firing incident in Dimapur on March 5, while Rs 50,000 each was announced for the injured.
Addressing a press con-ference at Dimapur On Mon-day, Nagaland Home Minis-ter Y Patton made the announcement and said the state government has decided not to announce any ex-gratia to the victim of the lynching Syed Farid Khan.  Patton reasoned that it was because the victim was the ‘culprit’ and that compensation, if any, can be forwarded only after the ‘judicial inquiry’ report has been submitted.
He said a medical report has ‘confirmed rape.’ He, however, was unable to specify which medical report the government was referring to while making this claim.  Patton said a 45-day Judicial Inquiry has been set up by the state govern-ment to probe the mob violence on March 5. It was informed that the Govern-ment plans to induct more members into the one-man inquiry.
The Home Minister refused to own up political responsibility for the unfor-tunate events of March 4 and 5, instead putting the blame entirely on the Dimapur district admini-stration for failing to handle the situation.
Admitting that he was not aware of any incident in Dimapur until the morning of March 5, he said that he was away in Delhi along with the Chief Minister at the time. Washing his hands off of the entire incident, he said, ‘It was a weakness of the State law enforcement agencies.’
When asked why no political leader from the Nagaland government had bothered to visit the vio-lence affected sites on March 4 or 5, he informed that he had delegated Parliamentary Secretary in-charge of Prisons Picto to the task, who arrived at the Central Jail at 5:45 PM on March 5.  This incidentally was more than an hour after the mob had broken into the jail for the second time to retrieve the person they lynched soon after. Patton attributed ‘limited police force’ as the reason behind the March 5 Dimapur incident. (UNI)