'No amount of money can compensate the parents'

NEW DELHI, AUG. 18. Twelve years after a devastating fire turned the birthday celebrations of Jamshedji Tata at Jamshedpur into a gruesome tragedy claiming 60 lives, the Supreme Court has upheld the Rs. four crore compensation awarded to the victims by the Chandrachud Committee.

A three-judge Bench, comprising Mr. Justice G.B. Pattanaik, Mr. Justice U.C. Banerjee and Mr. Justice S.N. Variava, upheld the manner in which the Chandrachud Committee calculated the compensation but hiked it substantially for the kin of the deceased, specially for the parents who lost their children. The Committee had awarded a compensation to the tune of Rs. 1,19,58,320 in favour of the dependents of the deceased persons and Rs. 2.28 crores as interim compensation in case of injured persons.

However, it increased the conventional figure for calculation of compensation from Rs. 25,000 to Rs. 50,000. As for the compensation for children, who died in the inferno on March 3, 1989, the committee had divided them into age groups of five to 10 years (14 children) and 10 to 15 years (10 children) and awarded a sum of Rs. 75,000 for the first group and Rs. 1,57,000 for the second.

Finding it inadequate, the Bench said, ``loss of a child to the parent is irrecoupable, and no amount of money could compensate the parents''.

The Bench said that keeping in mind the environment from which these children were brought, their parents being reasonably well- placed officials of the Tata Iron and Steel Company, ``we direct that the compensation amount for the children between the age group of five to 10 years should be three times. In other words, it should be Rs. 1.5 lakhs, to which the conventional figure of Rs. 50,000 should be added and thus a total amount in each case would be Rs. two lakhs''.

Taking up the death of children between the age group of 10 to 15, Mr. Justice Pattanaik, writing the judgement for the Bench, said they were all students of class VI and class X and were children of employees of TISCO.

The Bench calculated the compensation payable to the parents of these children to be Rs. 3.6 lakhs to which an additional sum of Rs. 50,000 was added taking the sum payable in each case to be Rs. 4.1 lakhs.

- PTI

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