MUMBAI: Baswanappa Kamalapure spent 12 months in jail in the erstwhile princely state of Hyderabad before `Operation Polo' liberated the state and unified it with the rest of India in 1948.
Sadly, in free India, he had to fight a legal battle for over twelve years to get the freedom fighter's pension.
On June 4, the Aurangabad bench of Bombay High Court directed the Union home ministry to pay him the pension with arrears from May 1995.
The reason for this delay was the home ministry's hair-splitting over whether he was eligible for pension at all, and afterwards, whether he should be granted pension from the date of his application.
The princely state of Hyderabad did not join the Indian union on August 15, 1947. It became a part of India only after the police action (called Operation Polo) in September 1948.
Preceding the police action, there was local movement against Nizam's rule.
Kamalapure (78), resident of village Achler in Maharashtra's Osmanabad district, was a part of this movement. (Some areas of south-east Maharashtra fell in Hyderabad state then.)
He was incarcerated by Nizam's police for over 12 months.
It was only in May 1995 that he applied to the union home ministry, seeking freedom fighter's pension.
The application was not decided promptly, so he filed petition in the High Court.
In December 1999, Aurangabad Bench of Bombay High Court disposed off the petition, directing ministry to decide his case in six months.
The order was passed by the home ministry rejecting the application, but for some reason, Kamalapure did not receive it until 2003. Then he filed a new writ petition, challenging the order.
When it came up for hearing, in April 2003, union government told the court that it had finally verified his claim, and had decided to grant him pension.
But the ministry took the stand that he would get the pension from June 2000, when it received the verification report on his application, and not from the time of application, that is May 1995.
He had to approach the High Court again.
In the decision last week, division bench of Justices P V Hardas and R M Savant held that not giving him pension
from the date of application would be "travesty of justice".
Upholding his plea, the bench directed the ministry to pay him arrears of pension from May 1995 within six months.
