Gas leak victim’s kin awarded ₹64L relief

KOLKATA: The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has directed a government-owned gas supply company to pay ~64 lakh in compensation to the family of a girl who had died due to a gas leak in January 2015 in central Kolkata.

“Now the world knows that my daughter Sumantika Banerjee was a victim of gas leak and didn’t die of drug abuse,” Debasis Banerjee, the victim’s father, said in a telephone conversation from Jalpaiguri in north Bengal.

Senior environment lawyers said that even though the NGT had earlier slapped fines amounting to crores of rupees on companies for polluting the environment, it is a rare case that a company has been asked to pay a huge amount of compensation to an individual victim who had died of a gas leak.

The bench of justice SP Wangdi and expert member Satyawan Singh Garbyal, in a 50-page judgment on Wednesday, directed the Greater Calcutta Gas

Supply Corporation Limited to pay the victim’s father Rs64 lakh within one month.

Senior officers of the GCGSCL refused to comment on the NGT’s judgement.

The 21-year-old victim, Sumantika Banerjee, was pursuing masters in physics from the then Presidency College and was staying with three other women in a house in central Kolkata, as a paying guest.

On January 4, Banerjee and a roommate, Subarna Lama, were found in an unconscious state in their room. The two were rushed to the hospital, where Banerjee was declared dead. Lama survived. The other two roommates were not present at that time.

“Soon after the incident, some media had reported that my daughter might have died of drug abuse. By the time the actual news broke that my daughter died of a gas leak and not drug abuse, the damage had been done. Neighbours and colleagues were looking down upon me as if we were the culprits,” said Debasis Banerjee, father of Sumantika.