In a notable ruling with implications for military pension entitlements, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has held that all forms of cancer among armed forces personnel, except those directly linked to smoking, are to be regarded as attributable to military service. The Court reasoned that the transformation of normal cells into malignant ones can occur “as a result of constant stress suffered by military personnel for a prolonged time.”
The Division Bench of Justice Harsimran Singh Sethi and Justice Vikas Suri delivered the ruling while upholding a 2019 order of the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT), Chandigarh, which had directed the grant of Special Family Pension to Kumari Salochna Verma, mother of a deceased soldier who succumbed to cancer in June 2009.
The Union of India had challenged the AFT’s decision, contending that the soldier’s ailment was “neither attributable to nor aggravated by military service.” Relying on the opinion of the Medical Board, the Centre argued that cancer was an “aggressive and rare disease” that could not be causally linked to the conditions of military duty or occupational stress.
The Court noted that the soldier had served for six years in the Army and was found medically fit at the time of recruitment. The Bench observed, “At the time of selection, the son of respondent No. 1 (Kumari Salochna Verma) was medically examined and found fit in all respects, and it was only after her son rendered service for six years with Army that he was found to be suffering from ‘Retroperitoneal Sarcoma with Widespread Metastasis’ (a form of cancer)… No cogent evidence / material or detailed medical record has been brought on record to show this court that the disease is not attributable to military service.”
The Court emphasised that in the absence of any substantiated medical data disproving the connection between the soldier’s service conditions and the onset of the disease, the benefit of doubt must operate in favour of the claimant. It held that the Medical Board’s report alone cannot extinguish the right of the deceased soldier’s dependent to claim special family pension.
Consequently, the Bench dismissed the Centre’s petition and affirmed that diseases like cancer, save for those caused by smoking, should be treated as service-attributable, given the inherent stress and exigencies of military life.
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