A Japanese court on Tuesday ordered the country’s government and the company that ran the Fukushima nuclear plant to pay damages for the nuclear disaster that followed the 2011 tsunami, Kyodo news agency reported. The damages amount to about 500 million yen (around Rs 29 crore), according to Reuters.
The complainants had asked for a monthly compensation of 50,000 yen (Rs 29,000) until the radiation in the region returns to pre-disaster levels. Over 10,000 victims are part of about 30 lawsuits seeking similar damages.
The Fukushima district court was hearing a suit filed by a group of about 3,800 plaintiffs, who are seeking damages from Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc and the government. The plea said that the government should be held liable because it could foresee the tsunami based on an assessment in 2002.
Two other courts have ruled similarly in the past against the company. One of them had, however, dismissed the claims against the government.
Japan lies in a seismically active zone and accounts for 20% of the world’s earthquakes. In 2011, an earthquake of magnitude 9 triggered a massive tsunami that led to the world’s worst nuclear disaster after Chernobyl.
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