As national attention is riveted to the dropsy deaths in Delhi, here, in Behala, live in the shadows, more than 250 people, many of them disabled for life, the victims of what became known as the Behala oil tragedy.

It happened in June 1988 in Buroshibtala and Chanditala in Calcutta and the plight of the victims is a cautionary tale that needs to be told at a time when authorities in the nation's capital watch the death toll rise every day.

These are the human faces of a tragedy at the root of which lies official neglect, an impotent administration which can't even ensure that the citizen's daily bread isn't laced with poison. ``Luckily, the neuroparalysis of the hands for most of the victims has almost disappeared. But the legs never recovered,'' says Mohan Alam, secretary of the Behala Oil Patients Welfare Committee.

0etween June and July 1988, about 600 people at Behala fell ill after consuming food cooked in oil. It was later found that the oil sold from a local ration shop was adulterated with Tri Cresyl Phosphate (TCP). The chemical was used to adulterate rapeseed oil, says Pradeep Mehta, secretary general of the Consumer Utility and Trust Society (CUTS), which fought the victims' case in the Calcutta High Court and the Supreme Court.

What hurts the victims more is that nothing happened to the ration shop owners who sold them the deadly oil. Four of them, three brothers who were owners of the shop, and an employee were caught and sentenced to life imprison ment by a lower court. But they moved the Calcutta High Court where the case is still pending. ``We can't walk normally,'' Alam complains bitterly, ``but the accused who live nearby, walk about freely as if they never knew anything about the tragedy.'' When, under the instruction of the National Commission, the State Government first set up a medical board for the victims in December, 1988, there were 592 of them. At the time of the second medical board in 1995, some of the patients had recovered considerably and the patients numbered 334. When the third board examined 262 patients last February, it found 17 ``very severe,'' 67 ``severe'' and 168 ``moderate'' cases, while only 10 had recovered normalcy.

As the victims fight their physical disabilities, they also struggle with the State Government for their monthly assistance. They used to get Rs 300 to Rs 100 per family, depending on the number of members, and 12 kg of rice per head. Later, the patients' welfare committee persuaded the Government to give them more cash instead of rice.