Supreme Court grants pension to 8 Armymen sacked for cowardice

Source:- indiatimes.com

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has granted pension to eight soldiers who were dismissed by the Army for an act of cowardice during a militant attack in 2003 on an EME battalion in Akhnoor of Jammu & Kashmir.

A bench of Justices Dipak Misra and A M Khanwilkar partly allowed the Union government’s appeal against the decision of Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT), which had ordered their reinstatement with full back wages. The SC granted them only pension benefits and refused back wages.

Nine soldiers were on guard duty in Akhnoor on July 22, 2003, when terrorists struck at around 5.50 am and attempted to move towards the quarter guard area where arms and ammunition were stored. The nine soldiers who formed the rear guard failed to take action to neutralise the terrorists. During a Court of Inquiry, it was found that most of these nine soldiers had returned almost the entire ammunition allotted to them (one of them returned 37 rounds of the 40 rounds of ammunition allowed to him).

The CoI found the soldiers blameworthy of displaying cowardice, failing to take effective steps to counter the threat and failing to neutralise the terrorists despite being armed. Challenging the AFT decision, additional solicitor general Maninder Singh argued that there was sufficient evidence to demonstrate that these soldiers displayed cowardice.

The bench agreed with Singh but decided to take a lenient view since seven of the eight dismissed soldiers had reached the age of superannuation.