By IANS
Kendrapada (Orissa) : The Lebanese government has paid $13,000 to a woman in Orissa as compensation for the death of her husband who was killed in an Israeli air raid last year.
Debesh Swain, 42, was working as a supervisor in the Maliben Best glass factory in Lebanon and had been killed July 22, 2006, when Israeli planes bombed the Beka Valley.
The compensation money was received by the Indian embassy in Beirut. Swain’s widow, Sakuntala, received the amount Thursday from the district collector.
“He was the only Indian to have lost his life among the 15,000-odd Indian workers in the war-torn country,” said Sakuntala, a resident of Khadipala village, about 120 km from the state capital Bhubaneswar.
“In February 2006, the Lebanese government had announced compensation for families of those killed but they did not send us the compensation immediately,” she said.
“The only compensation I received immediately was from the Orissa government of Rs.25,000 and Rs.862,000 as insurance money from the Maliben Best glass factory where my husband was working.”
The latest compensation reached in June this year, after Sakuntala wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the then President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam seeking their intervention in the matter.