Veterans’ family fighting endless war for justice

Nitin Jain

Chandigarh, February 19

A war veteran father-son duo and the son’s wife had invested their hard-earned money in what they thought would be their own home where they would live a peaceful life post-retirement. However, over a decade later, they have neither got the dream home nor their money back.

This is one of the many such cases which are awaiting execution at the Chandigarh State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission.

In separate complaints of war veteran Col Pritam Singh, who had fought World War-II, his son Brig DS Grewal, who had fought for the country in the war against Pakistan in 1971, and Grewal’s wife Manveen Grewal, the commission had issued non-bailable warrants (NBWs) against the respondents, Castle Concrete Infrastructure, through its directors Aashish Goel and Sumita Goel, 35 times and recovery certificates 37 times before declaring the respondents proclaimed offenders in May 2016.

However, surprisingly, the commission is still awaiting compliance of its orders.

On the execution appeals filed by the war veteran family way back in 2011, the commission had issued NBWs and recovery certificates against the respondents first time on May 17, 2012, and till March 30, 2017, it had issued NBWs for a record 35 times and recovery certificates for a record 37 times but to no avail. As a last resort, the commission declared the respondents proclaimed offenders on May 31 2016, but that also failed to deliver justice to the war veteran family.

Besides the war veteran family’s case, there are at least 16 other such execution appeals that are awaiting justice at the commission despite issuance of NBWs and recovery certificates for a number of times.

“It is due to the absence of power to initiate contempt proceedings that we are rendered helpless to take the accused to task even after declaring them proclaimed offenders,” the commission president, Justice Jasbir Singh, told The Tribune when asked about the reason behind the long delay in the execution of commission’s orders.

However, there was an exceptional case in which the owners of Shalimar Estate were caught by the Panchkula police in some other case and the commission asked the police to procure their production warrants to arrest them in seven separate execution appeals wherein they were wanted.

In the remaining six such cases, the police have failed to execute the NBWs and recovery certificates issued by the commission for delivering justice to the consumers.