HC raps Punjab for denying aide to terror victim’s widow
More than 25 years after a shopkeeper was killed by terrorists in Tarn Taran, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has virtually admonished the state of Punjab for denying financial assistance to his widow due to her inability to produce an FIR that had already been destroyed.
Justice Vinod S Bhardwaj rebuked the state for its conflicting stances, while making it clear that the widow could not be made to suffer for the absence of an official document lost over time.
The matter was placed before Justice Bhardwaj after Ramesh Rani filed a plea seeking, among other things, subsistence allowance, family pension and ex gratia grant in accordance with a notification dated May 10, 1990, issued by Punjab Department of Relief and Settlement, as her husband was killed by terrorists.
Justice Bhardwaj observed that the Deputy Commissioner concerned denied the claim citing her failure to produce the original FIR, despite verified reports from both Revenue Department and the police corroborating the death.
Justice Bhardwaj asserted the Deputy Superintendent of Police concerned “reiterated and verified the manner of Dharampal’s death and he having being killed in a terrorist incident”. An FIR was also registered on June 4, 1987, for murder and another offence under Sections 302 and 34 of the IPC at the City police station in Tarn Taran. But the record could not be found because it had “deteriorated”.
“The Deputy Commissioner’s submission that no FIR was registered cannot be accepted. The Deputy Commissioner is not the custodian of the police record and as such he has no authority to dispute the existence of the FIR,” the court asserted.
Release admissible benefits
The state cannot be permitted to take benefit of its own conflicting stand and to deprive the accrued benefit to the petitioner…. The respondent-state is, hence, directed to release the admissible benefits under the Subsistence Allowance to Widows of Riots/Terrorist Violence Rules, 1992. — Justice Vinod S Bhardwaj, Punjab and Haryana HC
