Ahooja Committee Report
T O T A L N O . O F D E A T H S
The information now available from various agencies can be summarized as follows: –
The number of deaths verified by the Relief Commissioner 2426
Number of deaths as per FIR lodged with the police. 1419
Number of deaths verified by the police out of the list supplied by the CJC. 1939
Number of deaths verified on the basis of applications Received by the Committee. 52
In view of the detailed enquiries conducted already I accept 2401 cases out of those verified by the Relief Commissioner, 25 cases being rejected either because of duplication or late enquiries revealing the person to be alive. The list of these 2401 names with other relevant particulars is in Part-I of the enclosed list.
The Delhi Police have also verified 1939 cases out of the CJC list, out of which 1656 cases are common with the list of Relief Commissioner leaving a balance of 280 cases. In these cases of 280 compensation has not been paid as no one has come forward to claim it. As these 280 cases, given by the CJC have been verified by the spot enquiries. The list of their names is in Part-II. The two lists together bring the number of deaths to 2681.
As already pointed out 1705 cases have been submitted to this Committee. A computer check revealed that out of these, 1488 cases were found included in the list of Relief Commissioner or that of the Police, leaving a balance of 217 cases. Out of these 217 cases, in 107 cases the applicants have stated that they have already received compensation from the Relief Commissioner. These cases should, therefore, have appeared in the Relief Commissioner’s list. As the computer check did not come up with these names, a manual examination of the case files was also done. But this also could not establish a proper link up. However, as the applicants themselves have admitted that they have received ex-gratia payment amounting to Rs.20,000/- from the Relief Commissioner, these 107 names could be concluded to be a part of the Relief Commissioner’s list, the non-matching of the names arising out of clerical mistakes or the changed particulars given by the claimants or insufficient information given in the applications. After omitting these 107 cases, only 110 cases remained for scrutiny by this Committee. As already stated the Committee has verified 52 cases out of this list to be genuine.
Thus the Committee comes to the conclusion that the total deaths during 1984 riots come to 2401 plus 280 plus 52 i.e. 2733.
The Committee is of the view that this is a reliable figure. The CJC had submitted a list containing 3870 names. Out of these, 1939 cases had been verified by the Delhi Police leaving 1731 cases. In respect of these remaining cases, in some cases verification could not done because particulars, i.e. names etc., were not given and only the number of deaths had been mentioned in a particular locality. However, now that this Committee has invited fresh applications based on public notices published in newspapers and also publicized through various press statements, the applications which came contained only 110 names in addition to those which had already been verified either by the Relief Commissioner or by the Delhi Police. If there had been another 1731 cases or so apart from those verified by the Delhi Police out of the list submitted by the CJC, then the number of additional cases coming before the Committee should also have been correspondingly large. The fact that only a small number of 110 such additional cases came to notice would indicate that enquiries done by the Delhi Administration both through the Relief Commissioner as well as the Delhi Police were quite exhaustive and thorough and very few cases were indeed left out. The figure of 2733 deaths now calculated by this Committee can, therefore, be taken as the authentic figure, though it is possible that there may be marginal changes in this number due to an odd case being brought to light here and there.
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