State reacts little to human rights cry

KOLKATA: Even if any of the recent complaints of police torture on detainees in West Bengal is proved in course of the ongoing inquiries, there is little hope that the victims or their kin would get proper compensation.
For, the state government claims that it does not have adequate funds for such purposes.
Although the government says it accepts most of the recommendations of the West Bengal Human Rights Commission, “the compensation amount is always so little that we are ashamed to mention it in any national forum,� comments a commission functionary.
The government is sitting over the suggestion by WBHRC chairman Justice (retd) Mukul Gopal Mukhopadhyay that “the state government should maintain a fund immediately to compensate victims of human rights violations�.
He made this suggestion at a UN Human Rights Day meeting on December 10, 1999, before chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. This is revealed in the WBHRC annual report for 1999-2000, which has not yet been tabled in the assembly.
At the same meeting, Justice Mukhopadhyay had pointed out that “there was almost one custodial death every week in West Bengal�.
He referred to the 51 reported custody deaths in 1998-99. The figure jumped to 84 in 1999-2000, which the report “noted with concern�.