Army brigadier’s disability claim rejected over 13-year gap in injury records

New Delhi: The Armed Forces Tribunal has rejected a retired brigadier’s claim for disability benefits after finding that an injury he attributed to a 2005 patrol was absent from his annual medical records for more than a decade. The ruling turns on the evidence of a service connection in this case, including the timing of the injury report and the medical findings recorded before his retirement.

The officer, commissioned into the Indian Army in December 1986, retired in March 2021 in a lower medical category. He said he had injured himself in January 2005 while patrolling near Lekhapani, Assam, during counter-insurgency operations, when he and three other soldiers fell into a stream.

According to his account, he received first aid while the other soldiers were taken to a military hospital. He also said a fall during morning physical training at Sriganganagar in 2018 injured his knee and back, aggravating problems in the same parts of his body and eventually leading to a downgrade in his medical category.

The Army disputed whether the records established the earlier injury, saying no injury report dating from 2005 to 2018 was available. A report on the alleged 2005 incident and a court of inquiry were initiated in 2018, after the officer first brought the matter to medical authorities; the Judge Advocate General’s Department later rejected the finding that the injury was attributable to service, citing the unexplained delay of more than 13 years.

The tribunal bench, comprising Justice Nandita Dubey and administrative member Rasika Chaube, examined the officer’s annual medical records alongside the outpatient treatment documents he submitted. It found that the annual records did not substantiate his account of a continuing injury from 2005: they showed him in SHAPE-1, the Army’s highest medical fitness category, and he had received promotions on time before reporting the injury in 2018.

The bench also noted a separate gap concerning the claimed fall during physical training in 2018: there was no injury report or court of inquiry for that incident. It concluded that the material before it did not establish a demonstrable link between the officer’s service and the onset or worsening of the disability for which he sought benefits.

The decision highlights the weight that contemporaneous records can carry when an injury is reported years after it allegedly occurred. It should be read as a finding on this officer’s evidence, rather than a rule that every injury missing from an annual medical record automatically defeats a disability claim: other courts have also emphasized the need to assess medical findings and service connections on their merits.