That
gory incident took place on 16 July 2004
in a Middle School around 10 am when the noon meal was being prepared in the
school kitchen that had a thatched roof. The roof caught fire when a spark from
the burning firewood fell on it and spread to the thatched roof of the
classroom where several children were studying ! – sure you have read those
details and sadness.
Greenery of Kumbakonam
Kumbakonam,
is located 40 km (25 mi) from Thanjavur and 273 km (170 mi) from Chennai. The
town is bounded by two rivers, the Kaveri River to the north and Arasalar River
to the south. Kumbakonam is known as a "temple town" due to the
prevalence of a number of temples here and is noted for its Mahamaham festival which
attracts people from all over the globe.
Kumbakonam dates back to the Sangam period and was ruled by the Early
Cholas, Pallavas, Medieval Cholas, Later Cholas, Pandyas, the Vijayanagar
Empire, Madurai Nayaks, Thanjavur Nayaks and the Thanjavur Marathas. It rose to
be a prominent city between the 7th and 9th centuries AD, when it served as a
capital of the Medieval Cholas.
That sad
and infamy of 2004 fire in a middle school reportedly killed 94 students of
primary section and brought to fore the unsafe conditions in which some schools
had been functioning. A committee setup
under a retired Judge found out that the heavy casualty was the false tactics
of the management to bring the other two school students to the aided primary
school to mislead the inspecting authorities about the student-teacher ratio.
The Chief Minister who visited the site, ordered the withdrawal of the
recognition of the three schools, prosecution of the school authorities and the
correspondent, suspension of the Chief Educational Officer, the District
Elementary Educational Officer and the Assistant Elementary Educational Officer
of Thanjavur school district. A compensation of ₹ one
lakh was provided to the kins of the victims, ₹25,000
to the severely injured and ₹ 10,000 to other
injured from the Chief Minister’s Public Relief Fund.
The
trial of the case started after a long delay in Sept 2012 in the Thanjavur district sessions court.
The case had 21 accused and had 488 witnesses that included 18 children
affected in the accident. Thanjavur district sessions court sentenced school
founder to life imprisonment and fined ₹
51,65,700. Ten others including school staff and officials from the Kumbakonam
municipality and education department of the state were sentenced to five year
imprisonment. Eleven accused, including three teachers were released from the
case.
There
are people who try to make money out of disaster and other people’s agony too ~
and this report in Times of India and other media makes a sad reading :
The families of the
49 children killed in the 2004 Kumbakonam school fire tragedy have approached
the Madras high court alleging that their counsel had withdrawn ₹2.30 lakh each —
amounting to nearly ₹1.12
crore — from the compensation given to them by the state government. Admitting the pleas, a division bench of
justices R Mahadevan and V Parthiban warned the advocate, S Tamilarasan, of
dire consequences and suggested that he repay the money to the victims before
it passed an order. The court then posted the matter for hearing on April 9.
According to U
Marimuthu, one of the petitioners, after a delay of nearly 10 years by the
state, the HC ordered the government to award compensation ranging from ₹5 lakh to ₹8 lakh to the
parents of the victims along with interest. On December 21, 2016, the
compensation was deposited in Marimuthu’s bank account. But a few weeks ago,
advocate S Tamilarasan, who represented them in the high court, came to
Kumbakonam and summoned all the parents. He obtained two undated blank cheques
and signed blank papers from each of the claimants.
Thereafter, to his
shock and surprise Marimuthu received a message from the bank on December 22
saying that ₹2.30
lakh had been deducted from his account. He rushed to the bank and found to his
dismay that counsel had misused the blank cheques and diverted the money in his
name and in the names of other such victims. Claiming that the act of the
advocate was illegal, high-handed, fraudulent and breach of the trust of the
claimants, the petitioner said each of the claimants had already paid ₹3,500 towards his
professional fees totalling to ₹3.5
lakh. How sad !!
With regards – S.
Sampathkumar
20th Mar
2018.
No comments:
Post a Comment