M A I N   N E W S

Ex-soldier denied pension for 32 years
S.P. Sharma
Tribune News Service

Kathua, August 24
Sitting at the home for the aged here, 68-year-old former soldier V.K. Abrol has pinned all hopes on the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), which has stepped in to get his pension released from the Defence Ministry which has been withholding it for the past nearly 32 years.

He was deployed for about 15 years on high mountains and inhospitable areas of the country to safeguard its borders, but had been denied pension since 1972, when he returned home after seeking retirement.

The apathy of the officialdom had landed him in the home for the aged as he did not have a penny to survive on.

Mr Abrol said he had volunteered to join the defence services and took active part during the 1962 war with China and the subsequent wars with Pakistan.

He first volunteered for the Indian Air Force, from where he was sent to the Army, which deployed him on the famous Tiger Hill in the Kargil area and various other places in Jammu and Kashmir and North-East.

He resigned after putting in more than 14 years of service and was entitled to pension. His pleadings for release of the pension before the then Defence Minister, Jagjivan Ram, and the then Army chief, General Sam Manekshaw, yielded no results. He ran from pillar to post at Delhi to get his pension case settled and finally landed here.

He chose Republic Day this year to write his tale of woes to the chairman of the NHRC, Justice A.S. Anand. The commission considered his complaint in its meeting on February 4 and ordered the Defence Secretary to make an appropriate inquiry and action at his end and report to the commission within six weeks.

Mr Abrol had started wondering whether the intervention of the NHRC would help solve his problem or not because nothing had been heard even after about 27 weeks of the commission specifically asking the Defence Secretary to file an action taken report within six weeks.

He landed up at the home for the aged in 1998 as he did not have any source of income. Till last year, he was earning some money by giving tuitions to school children, but had to leave this because of poor vision.