Pay now,confirm later

No confirmation that Tappal boy is dead,compensation rushed within months

Rafik Khan,14,has not been seen since August 14,after he had attended a farmers agitation against the Yamuna Expressway projec in Tappal,Aligarh. The protest ended in violence and police firing,with three farmers and a constable killed. Rafiks family insists the boy was injured in the firing and died in a hospital.

There are no records to confirm this but within months,the administration decided on a compensation package that could go up to Rs 10 lakh,with Rs 5 lakh already paid to the family by the Yamuna Expressway Authority on February 8 and a proposal for another Rs 5 lakh being processed by the government.

A person is declared dead after he has been missing for seven years. Rafik has now been missing for nine months.

The district administration admitted there is no evidence that Rafik is dead and explained that the compensation was decided on the familys request. There is no record that the boy is dead or even that he was injured during the firing, district magistrate Anil Kumar admitted.

But his family and the whole village have been insisting that he died in the incident. It is on their request that an amount of Rs 5 lakh was awarded to the family as compensation in February and the government is considering clearing another Rs 5 lakh as part of the compensation, the DM told The Indian Express.

At his home,Rafiks school bag hangs on the wall,his identity card and textbooks still inside. The notebooks have been taken by the other children in the house. The family says he had skipped the Independence Day preparations at school and gone to the protest site to listen to farmers speeches.

I got a call from a woman who identified herself as a block officer and informed us that Rafik was taken to Aligarh Medical College and died there, said Safi Mohammad,the boys father. When we went there the authorities confirmed that Rafik had been brought there and died. But they did not tell us where the body was taken after that, said Safi,working for daily wages since he lost his land to the project.

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When he received the compensation,Safi had to submit an affidavit that he would return half the proposed total should the boy come back. My relatives and I have searched for Rafik but could not trace him. It is suspected that he has died. I have received Rs 5 lakh and considering my financial condition,please grant further compensation of Rs 5 lakh. If Rafik comes back,I will return 50 per cent of the total amount,Rs. 5 lakh, he stated in the affadavit.

He told The Indian Express,A few days after the incident,the authorities said that there were no records to prove that the boy was caught in the firing. They said that our relatives might have hidden him. We searched for him for over four months though we knew he had died in the incident. When I went back to the administration,with the entire village by my side,they agreed to award compensation.

With three young daughters,another son,his wife and an elderly mother to look after,Safi barely manages to make ends meet. Yet,he says,. I wont use the money and I am ready to give it up if the administration brings my son alive. I have young daughters of marriageable age but which father wants to use his dead sons compensation money to marry off other children? We all know we have lost our son and that is the only reason we are asking for compensation. After giving us half the amount in February the administration promised to clear the rest of it in four days time but it has been over three months and we are yet to get the full compensation.

Rafik was good at studies and would have earned as much money as we got when he grew up and got a job, said Jainam Khan,his grandmother.