New Delhi: For those who had lost a family member in the Red Fort blast last year, grief manifests itself in different ways. It comes as anger to Nazma Khatun, who had identified and conducted the last rites of her brother’s limbless body. Nikesh regrets sending his friend to drop off a passenger at Old Delhi station. For Kriti Kataria and Sultana, the pain of raising children without their husbands envelops their every waking moment.
On Nov 11, 2025, a day after the blast, chief minister Rekha Gupta announced that govt would provide Rs 10 lakh as compensation to the kin of the deceased. Numan Ansari (22) had opened a small cosmetics shop to support his father, pay for his brother’s kidney treatment and save up for the weddings of two sisters. Dinesh Mishra (32) worked hours at a printing press to send home money for his three children, while Md Luqman (73) laboured in his old age to sustain himself.
“The grief is still the same as the day of the blast,” said Kriti, whose husband, Amar Kataria (34), was killed in the Nov 10 blast. The families claimed that it was “not even the bare minimum that the authorities should’ve done after such an incident”. “Except that now I also have to deal with the financial strain of raising a family alone. They alleged that some of them had demanded a govt job for the next of kin, but it went unheard. Most of the victims were the sole breadwinners of their families.
She is now unsure about how to spend the Rs 10 lakh she has received after Mohsin’s death: Buy a house?
Ram Balak Sahni said the compensation amount was spent on his son’s funeral and to repay the loan taken for the car, which had since become useless. After his death, we decided not to read it and gave it away with scrap as there was no space to store them,” Sahni said. “One’s life turns upside-down if her husband dies,” she said, adding that she works seven hours daily at a tailoring shop just to feed her children.
Amar’s family described him as someone who was full of life. They would go on an outing every month, something that can no more be continued. “Pankaj would keep writing something in his diary, a habit he had kept private. The family has just kept a framed photo of Pankaj, next to his grandfather’s. Sultana lives in a similar small house in Old Delhi’s Daryaganj with her two children, who complain that their mother works too much. Sultana and her husband, Mohsin, who worked as an e-rickshaw driver, had come to Delhi around three and a half years ago. Spend it on everyday expenses? Save up for her children’s marriage or use it for their studies?