CANACONA: For the families that lost their earning members in the Ruby building collapse of January 2014, every dawn brings the cruel reminder of a mother losing her son, a wife losing her husband, a child losing a father.
Speaking to Herald, the wife of one of the men who perished in the tragedy said, “It is a battle each day for me and my two young ones. I miss him by my side. My younger son, who was nine months old when his father died, now goes to school and often asks me, ‘where is my father?’ It brings tears to my eyes as it is not possible to explain the circumstances in which my husband died.”
Another relative of a victim of the tragedy says, “It is difficult to fill the vacuum our loved ones left in our lives, and no one is coming forward to counsel the immediate family and children of the persons who died. Life is a constant trauma and battle to make both ends meet,” he said.
Four years on the only visible memorial to the tragedy is the other building declared unsafe by the authorities, which still stands as a stoic reminder for the families who lost their loved ones in tragic circumstances.
Family members, with tears rolling down their eyes, said that the trauma the victims must have experienced and the pain, agony and sufferings of the families and friends of the deceased cannot be compensated with money.
Another family member told Herald that the builders had approached them with an offer of Rs 3 to 5 lakh as a settlement but the offer was rejected as it was too little. “We will not get our loved ones back but we don’t want people to take advantage of our poor economic condition and status and expect them to pay us a fair amount as this were the main earning members of our family,” he said.
Family members, however, felt let down by the way the authorities conducted the investigation as remarked in the order pronounced recently and are expecting a speedy, fair and free trial in the lower court with all of them pinning their hopes on the lawyers who are fighting for them.
