K. Manjula

HYDERABAD: Four months after the brutal slaying of Kasula Suryanarayana by the Taliban in Afghanistan, his widow K. Manjula has neither received the `special package' promised by the Centre nor the assistance announced by the State Government. The Bahrain-based company for which Suryanarayana had worked paid Rs. 1 lakh for the schooling of her two daughters and promised to arrange compensation shortly.

"I don't have any financial support. It will be enough if they give what was promised to us," Ms. Manjula told The Hindu here on Friday. "I want to use the money to meet the needs of my three children and provide them a secure future." Ms. Manjula said the company had paid educational expenses for the current year for her two daughters, studying in a residential school on the city outskirts. In an e-mail sent to her last fortnight, a company official had informed her that he would soon be coming to India to arrange the payment. A distraught Manjula, who is recuperating from a corrosive injury to oesophagus and stomach following her alleged bid to end her life after the tragedy, recalled that Chief Minister Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy had announced that the Government would pay Rs. 5 lakhs, provide her a job, a house site and meet the educational needs of her children. The Centre too promised a `special package'.

Dr. Reddy had promised to extend help soon when she called on him and submitted a representation on Thursday. He also enquired about her health.

"Though the Centre has announced a special package we don't know what it is," observed her father M. Viswanatham, who accompanied Ms. Manjula from Siddipet, where she is staying with her parents, to the Asian Institute of Gastroenterology (AIG) for a medical review. They said that they had only read about it in the newspapers and so far no message or communication had been received from the Government. Ms. Manjula said that she was keen to take up a job after she recovered fully. She thanked Dr. Nageswara Reddy, Director, AIG, for giving her a fresh lease of life and providing treatment free of cost.

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