Counter-claims from foreign lawyers, a victim with three wives, internecine family squabbles 8212; lawyers settling compensation claims of the victims of the November 12, 1996 Charkhi Dadri midair collision have had to contend with all this. And more. And with just seven months left for the two-year period for settling claims, efforts are on to bring the recalcitrant family members of victims, well, to the negotiating table.
There were 230 Indians among the 351 who were killed when the Saudia Airlines Boeing 747 collided with the Kazakhistan Airlines IL-76 over the mustard fields of Charkhi Dadri. All the Indians were flying in the Boeing 8212; a majority hailed from Uttar Pradesh 80, Bihar 48 and Rajasthan 46. Within days, Saudia announced that their families would be entitled to a maximum compensation of 20,000 with around 800 extra for damages for baggage.
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Representatives of Bhasin and Company 8212; the firm engaged by Saudia to settle claims 8212; say the first claim was settled within three weeks ofthe crash. Later, they realised that in every second case they took up, families disagreed bitterly about how the money should be split between the crash victim8217;s spouse, parents and children.
In about 50 cases, the dispute centered on who was the custodian of minor children of the victims: the surviving parent or grandparents? In one case of a family from Saharanpur 8212; yet to be settled 8212; the paternal grandmother and maternal grandparents were quarreling about the compensation due to an orphan, who was a year old when his parents died in the collision.
The lawyers thus played the role of family counselors and one by one the squabbling relatives were appeased. By end-April this year, 220 of the 230 compensation cases were settled. The remaining cases are the litmus test as the November 12 deadline approaches. Lalit Bhasin, who heads the lawyers firm, says a hurdle they faced was freeing some claimants from the clutches of lawyers he calls 8220;ambulance-chasers.8221;
Says Bhasin: 8220;Many families have beenmisled by these ambulance-chasers, whom we chose to ignore. Some settlements are still held up because innocent, illiterate people were forced to sign letters of authority by foreign lawyers.8221;
The first 8220;counter claims8221; were received from a US-based law firm, Barrett and Poore, in the names of next of kin of about 10 crash victims. The identical letters arrived two months of the crash and stated that initial investigations indicated that the air collision was a 8220;loss8221; which can be 8220;compensated8221; and that they were pursuing all available sources of recovery on behalf of 8220;their8221; clients.
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It transpires that representatives of the US firm had approached the families 8212; mostly in Punjab. Six or seven families were later persuaded to send letters to the US, withdrawing the letter of authority.
But fearing legal complications, Bhasin and Company were holding up settlement till such time the families withdrew their names from the list of clients of Barrett and Poore.
It is evident many of the haplessfamilies had been misled and promised 8220;fantastic8221; compensations. Middlemen had obviously played a role and in one case from Jalandhar, the victim8217;s wife has complained that while she wanted to withdraw the letter of authority, her father-in-law and his associates were holding her back.
In some settlements, the family feuds had taken a bizarre turn. In another case from Jalandhar, the compensation was claimed by the parents of the victim and then by a first, second and even a third wife. The lawyers are still deliberating over who they should accept as the legal heir of the victim 8212; eventually copies of bank documents and fixed deposits might swing the compensation in the direction of one of the women.
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In two other cases 8212; one of a family from Khammam, Andhra Pradesh and the other from Ameenabad, Uttar Pradesh 8212; the settlements had been pushed back by the families8217; threat of obtaining decree from Shariyat courts.
In the Andhra Pradesh case, the victim had been a woman and it was her husband and herparents who were engaged in verbal duels over the compensation.
The parents8217; plea was that the couple had been divorced at the time of the crash and they were entitled to receive the money. The husband was vociferously opposing this and had moved the Shariyat court in Saudi Arabia challenging this.
In the other case, the family had made a bid for an 8220;enhanced8221; compensation claim and it was the brother of the deceased who had threatened to approach the Shariyat court.
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Finally, there were the bunch of unsettled claims in which the problem basically was the joint families to which the victims belonged. Bhasin and Company last month received a letter from a Delhi-based lawyer on behalf of a woman from Lucknow who lost her husband in the crash.
The tenor of the letter is by-now familiar. It reads: 8220;Our client has been thrown out of her house by her in-laws and is anxious to receive the compensation that is due for herself and her children8230;8221;
Ritu Sarin is Executive Editor (News and Investigations) at The Indian Express group. Her areas of specialisation include internal security, money laundering and corruption.
Sarin is one of India’s most renowned reporters and has a career in journalism of over four decades. She is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) since 1999 and since early 2023, a member of its Board of Directors. She has also been a founder member of the ICIJ Network Committee (INC). She has, to begin with, alone, and later led teams which have worked on ICIJ’s Offshore Leaks, Swiss Leaks, the Pulitzer Prize winning Panama Papers, Paradise Papers, Implant Files, Fincen Files, Pandora Papers, the Uber Files and Deforestation Inc. She has conducted investigative journalism workshops and addressed investigative journalism conferences with a specialisation on collaborative journalism in several countries. ... Read More
