Bande's salary will be released soon

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Friday said the pending salary of sub-inspector Mallikarjun Bande, who was killed during an encounter with a notorious criminal in January 2014 at Kalaburagi, would be released soon.

Siddaramaiah directed the senior officers concerned to clear the files pertaining to Bande’s salary immediately, after the slain officer’s father Karibasappa Bande met him seeking clearance of the pay. The chief minister also promised Karibasappa that the government would bear the education expenses of his son’s children.

Karibasappa told the chief minister that Mallikarjun’s wife Mallamma Bande was being treated for brain tumour at Nimhans since last December and requested the government to bear the medical expenditure as the family was in financial trouble. The chief minister, however, did not make any specific assurances in this regard, but promised to consider the request positively.

Before meeting Siddaramaiah, Karibasappa staged a protest near the Mahatma Gandhi statue at Anand Rao Circle urging the government to fulfil the assurances it had made after his son’s death. He said the family was in deep crisis as Mallamma was critically ill.
Former chief minister Jagadish Shettar and senior BJP leader Suresh Kumar met Karibasappa and assured him that they would take up the matter with the State government.

The government released a compensation of Rs 50 lakh after Bande’s death and the family members said the money had been put in a bank in the form of a fixed deposit. The government, sources said, had not done anything so far about fixing pension for the SI’s wife, sanctioning salary till his last day of retirement, and recommending his name for the gallantry award.

The government had sent a letter to her about pension, which stated that she would get Rs 26,000 – her husband’s last-drawn salary – for five years, and Rs 7,000 thereafter. However, she rejected the offer as the government had promised that the pension would be fixed based on the salary on his last day of his retirement on superannuation, added the sources.

Mallamma, an anganwadi supervisor, has a nine-year-old daughter and a four-year-old son.

Bande, attached to Station Bazaar police station, suffered severe injuries in a shootout on January 8, 2014, in an operation to hunt down Munna Darbar, an underworld sharpshooter. The SI succumbed to his injuries in a hospital in Hyderabad on January 15.