7 month on, family of snakebite victim from Mumbai gets Rs70,000 compensation

The victim died of a snakebite in September 2017.

After seven months of delay, the family of an 11-year-old snakebite victim on Thursday received monetary compensation of Rs70,000 that was due to them from the state government under the Rajiv Gandhi Vidyarthi Apghat Sanugrah Anudan Yojana (RGVASAY).

The family of the victim received a ₹70,000 cheque from the state on Thursday after a 7-month delay.(HT Photo)

The victim, Asmita Gangaram Jadhav, was a resident of Chahade in Palghar and studied in a government-aided ashramshala. On September 17, 2017, she was bitten by a cobra. She was initially rushed to the primary health centre at Maswan, but due to the lack of a ventilator, had to be shifted to a Mumbai hospital. While she was being shifted, she succumbed to the venom that spread through her body.

Social worker Nikhil Mestry took up the cause of the victim’s father, Gangaram, who had been seeking financial compensation. Mestry took up the matter with then Palghar zilla parishad (ZP) CEO, Nidhi Chaudhari, and later, the current CEO Milind Borikar.

“There was a delay as the victim’s file kept being transferred from one department to another,” a senior ZP official said.

The RGVASAY was launched in 2003, to extend financial support to families of government school students from tribal communities who have met with accidents.