Christian group questions NHRC on compensation of Orissa victims

The Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC) on Tuesday questioned the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on the unsettled compensation of the victims of Orissa violence.

President of GCIC, Dr. Sajan George conversed with an official of the NHRC, urging it to compensate the Kandhamal victims as promised.

Mr. A.K. Garg, the Registrar of NHRC, according to the advocacy group, has promised to notify the State government on the need to allocate the funds for compensation to the victims who have lost their home and property in the violence.

The August 23 carnage had destroyed 4,640 houses, 252 churches and 13 educational institutions, besides rendering more than 50,000 homeless.

The Union Government, says GCIC, has still not distributed the compensation it promised to the victim's families – a sum of Rs. 3,00,000.

The State Government has also failed to provide assistance to rebuild majority of the houses that were destroyed during the communal attacks, the advocacy group noted.

Furthermore, GCIC has brought to the notice of NHRC the sense of fear after the series of vitreous hate speeches made by Ashok Sahu against minorities in Kandhamal.

Meanwhile, recently a book --'Kandhamal - a blot on Indian Secularism' by Christian journalist Anto Akkara said the Orissa violence was orchestrated and not a spontaneous reaction to the murder of Hindu religious leader.

According to the author, the long funeral procession of Swami Lakshmanananda was a ''ploy to whip up communal passions and execute the anti-Christian agenda that had been planned earlier and put to test on a limited scale during Christmas in 2007."

He pointed that only 633 arrests have been made though 11,348 have been named in 784 FIRs.