Freedom fighter pension claim declared bogus

Man too young to have participated in Independence struggle, says Supreme Court

September 17, 2014 02:49 am | Updated 02:49 am IST - NEW DELHI:

Seventy-two years after he claimed to have gone underground in the national freedom struggle in 1942, the Supreme Court confirmed a man’s pension claim as freedom fighter to be bogus.

A Bench of Justices Vikramjit Sen and Arun Mishra found that Jai Kushun Singh was a child of seven or eight in 1942, and could not have possibly participated in the struggle against the British.

The Bench said Singh, who is dead, was undeservedly receiving pension.

In fact, the Bench found that he had applied for pension under the Swatantra Sainik Samman Pension Scheme, 1980, twice. He failed to convince the government in 1995, but tried again two years later in 1997 and succeeded.

He was ordered to be paid pension with retrospective effect from July 1981. However, trouble started for Singh when local revenue authorities found his claim to be false after the Patna High Court ordered a suo motu inquiry into a large number of bogus claims for freedom fighter’s pension.

The voter list of 1975 showed his age as 42. The government ordered the recovery of his pension. Singh moved the High Court, a Division Bench of which ruled in his favour.

Subsequently, the Central government went in appeal to the Supreme Court.

Confirming that his claim was false, the Bench gave statistics of the expenditure involved in the scheme.

The judgment quoted from its 2010 verdict that 60,000 freedom fighters and their dependents received a monthly pension of Rs. 12,400. The expenditure for the year 2009-2010 alone was Rs.785 crore.

“The freedom fighter pension is a form of gratitude extended by an indebted nation in recognition of the sacrifice made by freedom fighters to achieve independence,” Justice Mishra, who wrote the verdict, observed.

“But at the same time it cannot be lost sight of that people who had no role to play in the freedom struggle should not be permitted to benefit from the liberal approach required to be adopted in the case of freedom fighters,” the Bench held.

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