Sepoy's widow gets enhanced pension after 27 yrs

Tribune News Service

Bhartesh Singh Thakur

Chandigarh, February 4

Rajinder Kaur, 56, struggled for 27 years to get “special family pension” after her husband sepoy Surjit Singh died of cancer, just two days after being invalided out of the Army. For all these years, she worked as a farm labourer or in MGNREGA to raise her two children.

The Chandigarh-bench of the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) recently allowed her petition and ordered the defence authorities to pay her disability pension of two days and arrears of the “special family pension” of the past 27 years. Rajinder Kaur, a resident of Ludhiana, is expected to get Rs 25 lakh in arrears.

“When my husband died, my daughter was three-year-old and son was four. I don’t have agricultural land. I used to work as a farm labourer in others’ fields, and sometimes on daily wage and in MGNREGA. I had thought about moving court, but didn’t have the means,” she said.

Her counsel Rajesh Sehgal told The Tribune, “The defence authorities declined the disability pension for two days, December 17 and December 18 of 1994, to her on the ground that her husband’s ailment was neither attributable to nor aggravated by the military service. As a result, “special family pension” was also not sanctioned, and ordinary family pension was allowed.”

Kaur filed an RTI application for relevant documents related to invaliding her husband from the service. After that, she once again approached the defence authorities, but in vain.

The defence authorities replied before the AFT that she would have been granted “special family pension” had her husband died on the account of the disability attributable to or aggravated by military service.

The bench comprising Justice Dharam Chand Chaudhary (retd) and Administrative Member Vice Admiral HCS Bisht (retd) observed, “Admittedly, at the time of the enrolment of the husband of the applicant, he was medically fit. He fell ill while in service. We fail to understand why the disability he incurred was not attributable to and aggravated by military service. The Medical Board which has examined the deceased medically, against columns “attributed to” and ‘aggravated by’, entered the remarks ‘No’, however, without recording any reason thereto.” The judgment added the late soldier’s disease was a serious one and the possibility of him to suffer from such disease “on the account of arduous job in the Army in different areas, including the field area, cannot be ruled out”.

“The respondents are directed to process the claim of the applicant for disability pension and the arrears be calculated and released to her for two days ie December 17 and 18, 1994. She is also held entitled to “special family pension” from December 19, 1994, the day when her husband passed away,” ruled the Bench.

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