Delhi High Court grants disability pension to a retired Army Nursing Officer, overturning the Armed Forces Tribunal decision. The court clarified that “not every obese person has hypertension,” rejecting the previous denial based on obesity and hypertension link.
The Delhi High Court mandated the government to provide a disability pension to a retired Army Nursing Officer, who was previously denied this benefit due to obesity and hypertension.
A Division Bench, comprising Justices C Hari Shankar and Om Prakash Shukla, set-aside the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) decision, which had dismissed the woman’s pension claim by linking her hypertension to her obesity without any medical justification.
The High Court stated,
“It is well known that every obese person does not suffer from hypertension, and every person who suffers from hypertension is not necessarily obese,”
The court found the AFT’s ruling to be clearly contrary to established law.
The Bench emphasized,
“The Tribunal, in our respectful opinion, was not justified in drawing, of itself, a causal connection between the hypertension and the obesity from which the petitioner was suffering, where no such causal connect is noticed either in the opinion of the RMB [Release Medical Board] or even in the opinion of the specialist who had examined the petitioner,”
The ruling followed a petition from a retired nurse who joined the Indian Army in 1969 and served for over 36 years. She retired on July 31, 2006, in a low medical category.
At the time of her release, the Release Medical Board (RMB) assessed her disability at 1–5% for obesity and 30% for hypertension, which qualifies her for a disability pension according to regulations.
However, her application was rejected, leading her to approach the AFT in 2018.
The AFT concluded that her hypertension was attributable to her obesity and therefore not related to military service, citing that she had been advised to lose weight during her service.
The High Court disagreed with this assessment, noting that the established legal principle states that if a disability is not recorded at the time of induction, it is presumed to have been caused or aggravated by military service unless clearly linked to another cause by the medical board.
In the case of Tripathi, neither the RMB nor the specialist provided evidence that her hypertension was due to obesity, as highlighted by the Bench.
Consequently, the court ordered the government to disburse the petitioner’s disability pension along with arrears.
Advocates AK Trivedi and Dhruv Kothari represented the petitioner, while the Union of India was represented by advocate Satya Ranjan Swain.
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