No ex-gratia in sight for kin of police who died of virus

New Delhi: Even as the death toll due to Covid among Delhi Police personnel has risen to over 70 now, the Delhi government is yet to clear even one compensation claim for the family of these personnel, as promised by CM Arvind Kejriwal in April last year. Several senior officials in the force, police personnel and families of officials, have now said that they have not received any compensation for the death of these cops on duty.

Significantly, the wife of 31-year-old Delhi Police constable Amit Rana has also written to the CM seeking compensation for the death of her husband, who was on Covid duty when he contracted the infection and eventually succumbed to the illness.

Rana was one of the first few cops to die from the virus in the city and the CM had even tweeted that his family would be given an ex-gratia of Rs 1 crore. His family, like that of many others, is yet to see the compensation amount.

While a large number of the deaths were reported just in the last two months, for which application paperwork is yet to be submitted to the Delhi Police, the police department had sent at least over 15 compensation claims for families of cops who died last year.

One senior official told Millennium Post that none of these claims had been approved so far and no amount had been disbursed to the families till now. He said that the applications were either rejected outright or kept pending.

All the claims that have been rejected come with a note that said the family is not entitled to it because their case was not fit for compensation. The key reason cited in these cases is that the Delhi government ruled that these police personnel were not on "Covid-19 duty" while they contracted the virus.

An officer had earlier said that in one of the cases they were told that the personnel was not on COVID 19 duty and they sent back the file. "That policeman was deployed and doing COVID 19 duty," the official said.

Another official said every policeman during every wave of COVID 19, they were performing their duties and many of them lost their lives. "We all were performing COVID duty. Our personnel were deployed at pickets, managing traffic, helping people in need. We also distributed food among needy and poor people," they said.

However, the Delhi government does not define what counts as "Covid duty" and how it determines at which point a person has contracted the virus.

According to Delhi Police data, last year, the total infections in city police had reached 7,603 with the recovery of 7,315 personnel, with 32 dying. But in the second wave, over 4,000 more cops tested positive and the death toll in the force rose to over 70.