HC pause on hooch compensation

The Calcutta High Court on Monday stayed the payments of compensation to families of victims in the hooch tragedy,for eight weeks.

Delivering the order,the Division Bench of Chief Justice Jaynarayan Patel and Justice Sombudha Charkraborty directed the state government to file an affidavit stating the policy for the payment of compensation on the incident.

In December,172 people in South 24-Parganas died after consuming illicit country liquor. Following this,the state government announced a compensation of Rs 2 lakh to the families of each victim. But the compensation amount has not been distributed among the victim families as yet.

Challenging the decision of the government on payment of compensation,advocate Chittranjan Panda filed a PIL urging the High Court to restrain the government from doing the same.

Panda,on Monday,had raised the point that the compensation should not be given as the victims had died to due to consumption of illicit liquor. Instead of giving Rs 2 lakh in cash to the victim families,they should be covered under one of the welfare schemes carried out by the state or central government. The compensation would be exhausted by the those families within a short period and they would not benefited,argued Panda.

Ashoke Banerjee,government pleader,argued that it was an accident. Normally,the government paid compensation to the victim families,he said. The Bench said if selling of illicit country liquor was crime,the consumption of the same should be treated as crime as well.

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