Week after killer waves, survivors lost in sea of red tape

Homeless, she can claim no compensation for her dead husband without this paper. A clerk asks her to first lodge a missing person’s complaint at the town police station next door. At the station, a constable waves her off, saying her village was under the jurisdiction of the neighbouring station, kilometres away.

Minutes later, another survivor, Vasanthi, rushes in to meet the clerks, a five-year-old boy in tow, to inquire about eight-year-old Ayyappan. The process repeats: she is asked to go to the police station first.

She doesn’t know how to go about it, and we take her along. A constable there stares at her suspiciously, then says he knows the missing boy is not her son. Vasanthi admits he is her brother-in-law’s son, orphaned as an infant. The five-year-old with her is Ayyappan’s younger brother.

‘‘I am childless. I brought both up as my own sons. Even their school records name me as their mother,’’ she weeps.

The policemen consult among themselves, and ask her to first get a certificate from the village officer.

More come in. P Shanmugan, a goldsmith from Nanaikantal village, has come to get the Presumed Dead certificates for his two sons, Arvind Kumar, 15, and Yogesh, 7.

Of the 25 people in his hamlet, 15 are dead. Unlike others crowding the clerks, Shanmughan is literate and knows how to go about it.

But most of the rest streaming in do not know they need to lodge a police complaint before going to the tehsildar. They don’t know they need to go to the right police station, either.

Since Black Sunday, 1,280 people have been reported missing in eight police stations across the district, say officers.

And the death toll here, according to the Disaster Management and Mitigation Department website today, stands at 5,925.

Nagapattinam Tehsildar N Ganapathy says he has instructions not to register anyone without getting a police complaint stamped. ‘‘I know it is tough on people when we ask them to go back. But we can’t help it. We began the process only today,’’ he says.

In fact, police stations have even dispensed with the normal practice of registering FIRs.

‘‘If we stick to FIRs and enquiry, it will take ages. So we give them a receipt, acknowledging they have filed a missing complaint with us,’’ says a senior officer.