Meenakshi's parents rue delay in relief

Parents of Meenakshi, the teenage girl who was stabbed to death in Anand Parbat last month, caused a huge embarrassment to the AAP government by turning up at the Assembly and telling reporters that they have not got the promised Rs 5 lakh compensation.

Meenakshi’s mother Usha and father Rajkumar, a tuberculosis patient, sent alarm bells ringing in Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s media team as TV channels started airing their bytes on complaints about politicisation of the murder.

“We have not got the compensation or justice yet,” said Usha, who waited with her husband for over an hour to enter the Assembly premises. As Chief Minister’s team panicked, Ratnesh Gupta, Director of Bureau of Legislative Studies, was tasked to bring the slain girl’s parents into the Assembly premises with respect.

For almost half an hour, Meenakshi’s parents were seated in Gupta’s room, offered tea and allegedly tutored not to air grievances while talking to reporters.
Later, Gupta escorted the two to the Lieutenant Governor’s gallery in the House and sat beside them in the front row – close to Delhi Commission for Women chief Swati Maliwal – till the end of the day’s proceedings.

Usha, who still wears a bandage on her wrist that was slashed by her daughter’s killers, slammed the system and voiced her complaints while waiting outside the Assembly.

“We thought that since nobody from the Delhi government has got back to us, we would ourselves try and meet the Chief Minister today. But we were not allowed in,” she said.
‘Hand in glove’

“Both police and the government are hand in glove... They are doing politics over murder,” she said. “After the crime, statements of our family member and our neighbours have been taken but nothing has happened,” she said.

Rajkumar said nobody from the government had met them since Kejriwal and Deputy Chief Minister Sisodia met the family at their Anand Parbat house last month after the murder and announced a compensation of Rs 5 lakh for the family.
Asked if he expected the discussion in the Assembly to yield anything, he said: “This all is nothing but lip service.”

A senior functionary in Kejriwal’s office confirmed that the Rs 5 lakh compensation had not been paid to Meenakshi’s family. “It is a commitment to the family and it would be complied with. Some procedural matters need more time,” said a Kejriwal aide.