Skip to main content

8 years after death, Gujarat court orders Rs 5.76 lakh compensation to silicosis victim

By A Representative
In the first-ever claim filed for compensating the death of a silicosis patient, Rajubhai, a labour court in Anand, Central Gujarat, has ordered payment of Rs 5,76,400 under the Employees Compensation Act and fine of Rs 5,000 towards expenses.
Jagdish Patel of the People's Training and Research Centre (PTRC), which fought the case the family of the worker, said, "Rajubhai was an agate worker and worked for a local employer for 19 years. At our clinic, he was diagnosed of silicosis in 2010. He then stopped working."
Suggesting that it took eight years to get the justice, during which period not only Rajubhai died but other family family members as well, Patel said, "In 2011 Rajubhai filed the claim in Anand labour court. PTRC arranged the lawyer. In December 2011 Rajubhai passed away."
Patel further said, "His mother was then made legal heir but she too died of silicosis after few months. Then two of his younger brothers were added as claimants. One of them, Prakash, also died of silicosis in a few months. Fortunately Ajit, the younger son, never worked as an agate worker."

Comments

TRENDING

From margins to microphones: The rise of Dalit hip-hop in India

By Tersina Maria Toppo*  A protest does not always arrive as a slogan shouted from a street corner. Sometimes, it arrives on a beat. A microphone replaces the megaphone, a music video becomes a public square, and the smartphone becomes the space where a history once pushed to the margins is narrated, debated, and shared.

UCC push would lead to state surveillance, erosion of women’s rights: Feminist alliance

By A Representative   The All-India Feminist Alliance (ALIFA) has issued a sweeping condemnation of the push to implement Uniform Civil Codes (UCCs) across 21 BJP- and NDA-ruled states, warning that the legislation masquerades as gender justice while fundamentally expanding state surveillance, criminalizing consensual relationships, and undermining the constitutional and economic rights of women and marginalized communities. 

Xi Jinping’s visit to USA: Recognition that China can't be contained?

By Vijay Prashad   President Xi Jinping’s forthcoming visit to the United States must be understood as more than an encounter between two heads of state, but it must be seen as an encounter between two possible futures. In one future, the United States imposes a spiral of confrontation against China. Trade disputes harden into economic warfare, then economic warfare intensifies into technological blockades, technological blockades produce military encirclement, and finally military encirclement creates incidents, and incidents the danger of becoming an unimaginable war.