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Thursday, October 13, 2011

Earthquake casualty list far from final and still with discrepancies

GANGTOK, 12 Oct: After the initial working down of the death toll due to the 18 September Earthquake from 77 to 60 by the state authorities, it appears that even this official figure, is also not all that accurate. A discrepancy has emerged in the official calculation of the total death toll which should bring the “official” death toll down by one to 59. And this is on a cursory check of the list and more detailed crosschecking throws up more confusion.
The discrepancies pertain mainly to the official calculation of the earthquake death toll in North district. This has come to light after cross checking of the figures issued by the state control room, the Teesta Urja and the Mangan and Chungthang police stations.
The main discrepancy [which should bring down the count to 59] is that there is one name in the final official figure issued by the State Control Room Special Report which has been repeated. The name pertains to an employee under Teesta Urja and cross checking with the list of employee deaths with the company it can be verified that there was only one person of that name employed under the company who died.
Dau Dayal Gupta, AGM, AIPL under Teesta Urja, has been listed twice in official casualty list under slightly different names; in one place he is listed as Dau Dayal and then again as Deen Dayal.
SDPO Chungthang also confirmed that Dau Dayal has also been listed as Deen Dayal in the list with the Chungthang sub divisional authorities.
The state authorities have been assessing the casualty list by the number of bodies recovered which is one of the reasons why the initial official death toll of 77 was brought down to 60. Another reason given was that certain casualties had been repeated in the earlier count.
However the special report, though preliminary, is quite intriguing as it says that apart from those names listed “…17 deaths indicated so far could not be confirmed…”.
After almost a month since the earthquake, there is yet to be an effort to ascertain whether these 17 are still missing, have been traced or otherwise.
And then there are oversights even in the missing list. Rakesh Thakur of Teesta Urja, employed with sub-contractors Sew Company at Chungthang, is officially listed as missing, but not included in the casualty list.
 This apart there are four names listed in the report whose bodies have not yet been recovered. These include Tak Tshering Lepcha who the Mangan police say is missing and presumed buried in the debris of the landslide at Barfor, Upper Dzongu; SR Nath, AGM, AIPL who is presumed to have been killed at the dam site at Chungthang and the bodies of two locals who are said to have been killed in the landslides at Bey, Dzongu.

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