Chandigarh: The Punjab and Haryana High Court has dismissed the Centre’s plea against grant of special family pension to an Army personnel who died due to cancer, observing that stress and strain for a prolonged period in military service can lead to the malady.

The court also cited rules governing employees of the petitioner which stated that except for cancer due to smoking, the rest of the cancers have been treated to be attributable to military service.

A division bench of Justices Harsimran Singh Sethi and Vikas Suri made these observations while rejecting the Centre’s petition challenging a 2019 order of the Armed Forces Tribunal (Chandigarh).

The tribunal had directed that Kumari Salochna Verma be granted special family pension from the date of her son’s death.

The petitioner’s counsel submitted that Verma’s son suffered from retroperitoneal sarcoma with widespread metastasis and died on June 24, 2009.

The disease was found by the medical board to be “neither attributable to nor aggravated by the military service”, the counsel further submitted and contended that the respondent’s son suffered from a rare and aggressive form of the disease.

The petitioner sought to have the tribunal’s “impugned” order set aside.

The court said in its order last month that Verma’s son was recruited into the Army on December 12, 2003, and when he was enrolled, he was medically examined and found to be fit in all respects.

Citing a judgment in Dharamvir Singh versus Union of India and others, 2013, the court said in a case where a soldier is found to be fit at the time of enrolment and later contracts a disease, it may be presumed to have been aggravated by or attributable to military service.

The bench observed that the disease from which Verma’s son was suffering did not surface instantaneously one day; rather, it is a multi-stage process, wherein normal cells of the body transform into malignant tumour cells. This can happen “as a result of constant stress suffered by the patient concerned for a prolonged time”.

“For a period of six years, the son of the respondent no. 1 (Verma) was serving in the Army, and keeping in view the various postings and the stress he encountered during such postings, it can be safely said that the stress and strain for a prolonged time resulted into cancer,” the bench noted in its order.

It also pointed out that no cogent evidence, material, or detailed medical record has been brought on record to show that the disease was not attributable to military service.

“That being so, the said disease has to be attributed to the military service,” it said.