Given ₹2 lakh assance to 18, says Indore collector in water contamination case

BHOPAL: The government has made an ex-gratia payment of ₹2 lakh to the next-of-kin of 18 people who died in the Indore locality where hundreds of people have fallen ill due to contaminated drinking water, Indore drict collector Shivam Verma said on Wednesday.Family members of a victim, who died after consumption of allegedly contaminated water, mourn in the Bhagirathpura area of Indore. (PTI FILE PHOTO)Verma said the financial assance was given to the family of people who died in Indore’s Bhagirathpura colony in the past two weeks following instructions of chief miner Mohan Yadav.The official l of deceased due to the contaminated water will, however, be the recommendations of a panel of doctors tasked to analyse the cause of death after examining symptoms and treatment, he said.Yadav on Tuesday announced that he had instructed officials to make ex-gratia payments to families of people who had died.“The loss of even a single life is painful for us. Therefore, we are not getting into the statics. It’s a different matter that the adminration has its own way of counting. The government stands with everyone, regardless of those figures, so I instructed them to give compensation to all as per death recorded in the data of the municipal corporation,” he said.Among those who received the money was the family of Sumitra Devi, 50, who died on December 21. The authorities had initially insed that her death wasn’t linked to the contaminated drinking water supplied the city’s municipal corporation.“Sumitra had come from Bihar to see her son a month before she died on December 21. She complained of vomiting and stomach pain on December 12-13. She fell ill and died on December 21. Initially, the adminration denied her death due to contamination of water saying that the outbreak was reported on December 25 but now they have given a cheque of ₹2 lakh to her son,” said Saroj, her relative.Verma said only six deaths have so far been linked to supply of contaminated water.Sunil Sahu, father of six-month-old Avyan Sahu, said, “We don’t know why they are denying the death of my son in official records. Local corporator and urban development miner Kailsah Vijayvargiya ji tried to give us compensation on the very next day of the death of my son. We refused to take it but now some officers have given us a ₹2 lakh cheque.”Verma also said only 80 patients were currently admitted to hospitalsOn Wednesday, it was reported that 16 patients were admitted to the ICU, three of whom were on ventilators. So far, 429 people have been admitted. Of these, 330 have been discharged as of Tuesday evening. This leaves only 99 patients currently under treatment.