India

CHANDIGARH: Directing the Army to grant special family pension to the widow of a Major found dead in a bathroom 23 years ago in a case of brain haemorrhage due to hypertension, the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) has asked the authorities to not adopt any ‘mechanical or hyper technical’ method in denying relief as is being followed in such cases.“We are of the considered opinion that a sympathetic view is required to be taken by the competent authority in such cases, not bound by mechanical manner of disposal of cases, where a service personnel has rendered almost a substantial part of his life to the Indian Army, but his family has not been granted benefit of a beneficial provision for the sake of technical and mechanical mechanism being followed by the competent authorities in such cases,” said the AFT order, which was released on Thursday.A division bench, comprising Justice Rajendra Me non (Retd), chairperson, AFT; and Lt Gen CP Mohanty (Retd), administrative member, principal bench of the AFT, New Delhi, passed the orders on a petition filed by Bindu Chadha, the wife of late Major Sanjeev Chadha.The applicant’s husband had joined the Indian Army in June 1988 and died on September 3, 2000, while on posting at the headquarters (technical group), EME, New Delhi, with the cause of death recorded as ‘intra cerebral haemorrhage’.

She was not granted the special family pension by the competent authority considering it to be a case of death as neither attributable to nor aggravated by service.Chaitanya Aggarwal, the counsel for the applicant, submitted that Chadha was posted at the headquarters and was performing duties, which led to hypertension, leading to his death, and it does not matter if hypertension was never detected when the officer was alive.Aggarwal submitted that hypertension, which Chadha was suffering from, was attributable to Army service.

He added that the applicant’s husband did not smoke or drink and there is no recorded history of hypertension in his family either.

Chadha served in various field and peace areas in different climatic conditions and there was continuous stress and strain of service, he argued.

The central government had taken the stance that the applicant’s husband was on leave when he died on September 3, 2000, and the death of the officer was classified as physical casualty.It was added that the competent authority has considered the cause of death as neither attributable to nor aggravated by the service.After hearing all the parties, the AFT said is indeed an irony that a service personnel rendering crucial 12 years of his life to the Indian Army dies due to a disease which can no way be held as not attributable to the military service by virtue of the fact that nothing was detected in the initial medical examination when he entered service.





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