Government agencies in India failed to provide adequate compensation to the victims of the Delhi riots, even after five years, says a report published by Karwan e Mohabbat, a civil society group working for justice and religious and sectarian harmony in the country.
The report, “The Absent State: Comprehensive State Denial of Reparation & Recompense to the Survivors of the 2020 Delhi Pogroms,” was released in New Delhi on Wednesday, February 26 in an event held to commemorate five years of riots in Delhi.
The report states asserts that, both the state government, led by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the central government, led by the ultra-right-wing and Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), failed to carry out the required tasks of reparation during and after the riots between February 23 and 26, 2020, in which 53 people, mostly Muslims, were killed and hundreds other were injured.
“Providing relief to victims of communal violence is an established administrative duty, yet the Delhi government in 2020 failed, much like Gujarat in 2002. Delhi did not ensure adequate relief camps or basic services, forcing victims out before they had a safe alternative,” says the report, as quoted by several media organizations.
Thousands of people, mostly Muslims, were forced out of their homes due to riots which were concentrated in Delhi’s north-east regions. The rioters targeted and burnt houses, shops and other commercial establishments related to the victims following provocations by BJP leaders.
Various reports have indicated similarities between the 2020 riots in Delhi and anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat in 2002. With similar claims of law enforcement and relief agencies playing a biased role under pressure from the government, in both instances, led by the BJP.
Brinda Karat, member of the polit bureau of Communist Party of India (Marxist), in another related event held to commemorate the five years of riots in Delhi on Thursday, said that the administration acted in a completely biased manner during and after the riots.
Muslims, which were the primary targets of the “one-sided attacks” with 76% of all those killed and 80% of all the properties lost, have themselves been hunted by the administration with false cases and arrests, Karat claimed. She also underlined that “compensation has not been fully provided, and the criteria for compensation is also flawed.”
Deliberate denial of relief
The Karwan-e-Mohabbat report supplements the claims of the botched investigation carried out by the police and lackluster role of the judiciary in the context of the cases related to the Delhi riots. It notes that most of the claims made by the victims for monetary compensation remain unaddressed even after five years.
The report implicated the state government, led by the AAP at the time, for its failure to do its job of rescuing the victims of the arson and violence rejecting its claims that it was unable to prevent the riots because the police were not under its control.
Since Delhi is the national capital territory, police are under the control of the central government led by the BJP.
According to the report, total demand for compensation from the victims of the riots stood at mere Rs 1,530 million or nearly USD 17.5 million. The government only approved 21 crore or around USD 2.4 million worth of compensation in 2021 which included the claims made by the government agencies for their damage of properties, leaving the majority of victims without any compensation.
“This is arguably the worst performance of compensation payments after communal [read religious or sectarian] violence in the history of the Indian republic,” the report says.
The failure of the city and central governments to fulfill their duty is even more glaring given the fact that the level of compensation was extraordinarily low, even lower than the 1984 riots against the Sikh minority in the city.
The report also says that out of the 117 claims of property damages submitted to the authorities, only 25, about 22% received compensation leaving nearly 86% of victims whose houses/other properties were damaged by the rioters without any compensation. This hampered “their ability to return to normalcy” after the violence.
Out of the total amount of Rs 740, 0000 or nearly USD 85,000 claimed in these 117 cases of property damage, only about 7.5% was actually disbursed by the authorities, “highlighting a significant disparity between the claims made and the relief sanctioned. The absence of an appeal system meant that those who were wrongly denied compensation, faced technical errors, or received incorrect amounts had no formal mechanism to challenge the decision,” the report says.
“The outcome is that nearly five years after the violence, after the initial distribution mainly of ex gratia relief and death compensation by the state government, virtually no compensation has been paid to the victims/survivors, and there seems no prospect of this happening in the foreseeable future,” the report says.
