The Delhi Police on Monday registered a case of death due to negligence in connection with the loss of life of a six-month-old baby, allegedly during the demolition of a slum cluster in West Delhi’s Shakur Basti on Saturday. The autopsy report said the baby died due to shock and injuries to its chest and head.
The Delhi High Court also slammed the Northern Railway for razing the slum cluster and directed the authorities to immediately rehabilitate the 5,000 people who had been rendered homeless in the biting cold.
Government sources rued that because of the blunder of the Northern Railway, headed by AK Puthia, the entire Ministry is being blamed for the inhuman anti-encroachment drive.
“As the officials came knocking, we started quickly packing our belongings. In the ensuing melee we did not realise when a heap of clothes fell on her, that turned out to be fatal,” said baby’s father Mohammad Anwar in his statement to the police.
Meanwhile, in the midst of a raging controversy over the demolition drive by the Northern Railway, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, his Deputy Manish Sisodia and senior Delhi Government officials met Union Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu and discussed how people left homeless due to the demolition could be rehabilitated and public land put to use.
“In principle, it was decided that there will be no demolition anywhere without rehabilitation in the coming days,” Kejriwal said after the 30-minute-long meeting with Prabhu.
On his part, Prabhu said, “I invited the Chief Minister of Delhi for discussion on how public land could be cleared for utilisation for important public purposes and resource-less people displaced from public land could be alternatively accommodated with a humanitarian approach.”
Northern Railway came in for severe criticism from all quarters and from Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Venkaiah Naidu, who said they should not have conducted the demolition drive in Shakur Basti at the peak of winter. “There should be no politics in this case. It should be seen from a humanitarian angle and this demolition drive should not have been conducted in winter,” he stressed.
The Delhi High Court also came down heavily on the Railway Ministry and police for razing the slum cluster and directed the authorities to immediately rehabilitate the 5,000 people who had been rendered homeless in this biting cold.
A Bench of justices S Muralidhar and Vibhu Bakhru further said this was a “pathetic act” as “peoples’ lives are involved and we cannot be so casual” and added that Northern Railways had not learnt from past mistakes.
The HC also issued a notice to the Aam Aadmi Party Government, Delhi Police and Northern Railways asking them to submit step-by-step information on what was done before taking forward the demolition drive.
Meanwhile, the incident has sparked a war of words involving the AAP, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress.
While, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi visited the site and targeted both the Centre and the AAP Government, the JD(U) and TMC also joined the AAP in blaming the Northern Railway for the anti-encroachment drive.
“Modi sarkar and Kejriwal sarkar are responsible for what has happened. But now they are busy blaming each other. Instead they should provide help to the people who have been displaced & rehabilitate them,” Gandhi said on Twitter.
Arvind Kejriwal hit back at Rahul by calling him a “child”. “Rahul Gandhi is still a child. His party probably did not tell him that Railway comes under the Central Government, and not under the Government of Delhi,” he said.
In the lok Sabha, Prabhu dubbed as “untrue” allegations of the infant’s death during the demolition drive and claimed the child died earlier. “The child had died much before the demolition drive,” said Prabhu adding the encroachments were a “safety hazard” which have been impeding development.
He was responding to AAP MP Bhagwant Mann’s question related to the death of the child. The Minister said: “As per report from Northern Railway, the child alleged to have died during the encroachment removal drive, had expired much before the encroachment removal had commenced, as confirmed from Delhi Police records.”
Earlier, Mann had attacked the Northern Railways for the incident and said that even the Supreme Court had ruled that no such anti-encroachment drive could be carried out without providing for alternate arrangement. He said that the Delhi Chief Minister had written three letters on the issue and still the drive was undertaken.
Prabhu told Parliament that even the National Green Tribunal had recently “fined Northern Railway for not maintaining cleanliness on and around the tracks. Such encroachments are the main source of garbage and open defecation. Encroachments are a safety hazards for train operation as well as for the encroachers themselves.”