The Punjab and Haryana High Court has ordered the state government to provide a compassionate appointment to the son of an Indian Army officer who died during Operation Snow Leopard. Issuing the directive in a July 17 ruling, the court overturned multiple administrative rejections and mandated that the appointment process be completed within four months.
The decision resolves a dispute over the classification of military deaths in operational areas. The state government had denied the employment request, arguing that the officer died from an illness rather than being killed in action, and claimed that state policies only covered dependents of recognized martyrs.
Justice Nidhi Gupta dismissed the government’s position, determining that the officer’s fatal medical condition, Cerebral Venous Thrombosis, was directly caused by his deployment to an extreme high-altitude environment in Leh during a period of active border hostilities. The court noted that treating a service-related condition developed on an active battlefront as a standard disease was an unacceptable interpretation of the rules.
The petition was filed by Saksham Rathore, whose father, Brigadier Abhimanyu Singh Rathore, died on July 30, 2023. Following his death, military authorities issued a certificate in January 2024 officially designating the event as a battle casualty. The petitioner’s employment application was forwarded by the Army but subsequently rejected by state authorities through separate non-speaking orders issued between February 2024 and December 2025.
Policy Interpretations And Military Terminology
During the hearings, the state’s legal representative argued that current policies restricted compassionate appointments strictly to the dependents of martyrs, disqualifying those categorized as battle casualties due to illness. The state also maintained that its updated 2023 employment policy could not be applied retroactively to this case.
Legal counsel for the petitioner countered that the application was entirely valid under the state’s older 2018 policy, which specifically included provisions for battle casualties.
Addressing the terminology dispute, the court clarified that the Armed Forces do not officially use the term martyr due to its associated political and religious meanings. Instead, the military classifies personnel who die in the line of duty or in operational zones as battle casualties.
The bench observed that while Haryana’s original 2014 policy relied on the term martyr, subsequent amendments in 2018 and clarifications in 2023 deliberately expanded eligibility to include dependents of battle casualties. The court concluded that the state authorities had ignored their own amended guidelines by relying on semantics to deny the application.
