Aditi Tandon
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 28
Thirty-five-year old Mona Lisa had hoped for a normal life. But the August of 2008 shattered her smallest dreams, leaving her alone to cope with the dark memories of a brutal attack on the Christians of Kandhamal.

Mona’s husband was one among the 43 killed in the anti-Christian violence in Orissa last year. But nine months after the carnage, she, along with other young widows of the area, are working overtime to get their dead on the official list of the state government.

So far, only 50 of the 153 women widowed in the anti-minority attacks have received compensation from the Naveen Patnaik-led Orissa government, which officially admits to only 32 killings. Christian widows, who petitioned the National Human Rights Commission afresh today, however say that 75 persons were killed and their widows have the right to both the state and central government compensation.

So slack has the development on rehabilitation front been that the central government has so far compensated only 16 affected families with Rs 3 lakh it promised last year. Christians fear the promise may be squandered now that the elections in Orissa are also over.

The petitioning widows today told the NHRC that the Orissa government had so far distributed Rs 2 lakh each to the relatives of only 50 widows, whose murders it acknowledged; it also claimed to have forwarded this very list to the Prime Minister’s office for payment of the central government compensation.

For the 153 widows still lodged in the relief camps across Kandhamal, this money is the last link to survival. “If this does not come, we will have no option but to beg,” says Manini, another widow from Kandhamal, who represented the case of others before the NHRC today.

Mona Lisa for her part was accompanied by Obed, her 5-year-old son, who has not attended school for eight months due to lack of peace in Kandhamal, which voted massively (66 per cent) in the Lok Sabha elections on April 16.

The widows also want an enquiry into the death list of 75 persons, which Christians of the area have compiled and submitted to the Supreme Court, besides the reconstruction of 5,031 damaged houses.

For the record, 633 persons have been arrested so far for last year’s anti-Christian attacks in Kandhamal, where 11, 348 persons were named in 784 FIRs. Under alleged threat to reconvert, more than 32,000 Christians are living in five relief camps in Kandhamal despite the fact that they now have to fend for themselves. The state government long stopped supplying food and other essentials to these people.