Beggar description of conflict-hit NC cadre

Himalayan News Service

RUKUM: Indra Lal Gautam, who became disabled at the hands of the UCPN-Maoist activists during the insurgency era, is yet to receive any compensation due to him.

Gautam, 45, a Nepali Congress activist and a resident of Koltara, Khalanga-3, had gone to attend an election campaign in Banphikot in March 1996, when the Maoist cadres brutally attacked him with batons and stones, leaving him permanently disabled.

“I was first blind-folded and beaten up just because I was involved in a publicity campaign of the Nepali Congress party,” Gautam recalled.

Thirteen years after the terrible incident, Gatam can move only with the aid of crutches, as his hands and feet remained paralysed.

Gautam also said he sustained a serious head injury and bitterly recounts the incident. “ I lost my consciousness when the Maoists pounded on me with batons and stones,” Gautam recalled his past.

“Though I was attacked for my involvement in the Nepali Congress, no party has ever helped me,” he lamented.

Gautam has later learnt that ‘some persons’ in his village had personal grievances against him that left him disabled for the rest of his life. “Three others were also attacked in the incident.”

The only thing that Gautam has received is an identity card that explains he has disability, issued under the Clause 5 of Disabled Protection and Welfare Regulation-1995.

Gautam, the sole breadwinner in the family of four, has a bottom line concern: How to feed his wife, two sons and two daughters.

Although he is earning his livelihood by mending old clothes, working as a tailor, the money he pockets is hardly enough to buy food items.

Now, Gautam receives financial assistance of Rs 100 to 500 from VDC secretaries occasioally. But the money goes

entirely on travel made for his treatment. His artificial leg was donated by Rukum chapter of United Mission to Nepal and Meek Nepal.

“Though there are several persons rendered disabled in the course of conflict, the government has not addressed their plight,” Gautam said.

The government is said to have released Rs 1.5 crore to the conflict victims but the victims say they have not received anything, yet.