Mangalore crash: One year on

New Delhi: A year ago, exactly on this day an Air India express aircraft over-shot the runway at Mangalore, killing 158 passengers flying from Dubai. Today, while the pain and grief has numbed for the victims' families, many of them still believe that the national carrier is haggling over the compensation they deserve.

"Nobody can manage the loss of my life. I lost everything, I lost my wife, I lost my son," says Abdul Rehman, a worker in Shipping Company in Dubai.

Abdul's grief is still raw, his sorrow tinged with anger at Air India. He says Air India has not even bothered to call him after giving him an initial compensation of 15 lakhs.

"Those who speak softly, to them they say 'take the money and go, keep it in the bank, you'll get 'sood''. To get 'sood' we didn't send our children. We didn't want to sacrifice our children to a sleeping pilot.

Abdul Rehman's bitterness is not isolated, 70 other families have joined in a legal battle that extends from court in Kerala to hiring a Swedish advocate to fight the case in Dubai.

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The tussle between the victims' families and the airline is on a single point: The amount of compensation. Families of victims believe they deserve at least 75 lakh rupees per victim While Air India says, there is no such ball park figure.

Mohammad Beary of Mangalore air crash victims association says," As per the Montreal convention, if there is fault or no fault , upto, not exceeding 1 lac SDR which comes to about 76 lacs should be paid"

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"The whole idea is to place the family members in the same financial position as they would have been in had the accident not occurred. There were large no. of people who had very small salaries and it could be in those cases the amount of compensation would not come upto that figure," says Mr Nanavati, lawyer for Air India.

According to Air India, compensation will differ on a case to case basis, which it says is the international norm. While victims' families believe, that the airline wants to take them for a ride since most of them come from poor backgrounds. Its just one more controversy for the embattled national carrier.