BINOD KUMAR SETHY. ELEGRAPH PICTURE

Kendrapara, April 22: A stampede that was the fallout of an oil depot fire at Sitapura in Rajasthan had crippled 36-year-old electrical technician Binod Kumar Sethy, but what happened in its aftermath has left him devastated.

Sethy, who hails from Alapua village under Pattamundai police station, still shudders to think of the day when fire broke out and blew up the Sitapura depot of the Indian Oil Corporation Limited.

“I was working Genus Power Infrastructure Corporation, which was a private company. I was well paid and earned enough for a decent living. On October 29, 2009, a fire at the oil depot shattered my life. I have been crippled physically and have lost my job. I do not have any land and my wife and two teenage daughters depend on me. I have no source of income to support my family,” said Sethy, who cannot move his left leg and right arm ever since the accident.

Sethy, who undergoes bouts of partial paralytic attack, said: “Our factory was situated in close vicinity of the Sitapura industrial estate’s IOC oil depot on the outskirts of Jaipur. When the oil depot caught fire, black smoke enveloped the entire region. I was working in the factory. In a state of panic, everybody began to run for cover and it resulted in a stampede. My left leg and right arm was fractured. I was admitted in a hospital but failed to recover from the fractured wounds. Both the limbs are now paralysed.”

Though Sethy survived, the mishap had led to the loss of 11 lives. The injured worker from Orissa had hoped that compensation announced by the Rajasthan government and the Indian Oil Corporation would help him to tide over his financial crisis. The private company that employed him also did not come to his rescue.

After waiting for more than a year, the incapacitated worker is now fighting a grim battle to get the money. Sethy shot off petitions to the President, Prime Minister and the chief ministers of Rajasthan and Orissa. Sethy urged them to ensure that he gets ex-gratia payments of Rs 2 lakh each that the petroleum ministry and the Rajasthan government had announced for the critically injured. “As a last resort, I have written to the President, Prime Minister and chief ministers of Orissa and Rajasthan. Besides the ex-gratia claim, I have appealed to the VVIPs to engage my matriculate wife in the IOCL’s oil refinery project in Paradip,” he said.

“We are taking up the matter with the Paradip-based IOCL authorities,” said Akuli Charan Bhuyan, additional district magistrate, Kendrapara.

The administration is also aware of Sethy’s plight.