HC allows family of three cancer patients to alienate their land even though it is notified for acquisition by KIADB

Coming to the rescue of a family, three members of which are suffering from cancer, and one a psychic patient, the High Court of Karnataka allowed them to either alienate or encumber 50% of their total 2 acres 3 guntas land even though the entire land is notified for acquisition by the Karnataka Industrial Areas Development Board (KIADB).

Coming to the rescue of a family, three members of which are suffering from cancer, and one a psychic patient, the High Court of Karnataka allowed them to either alienate or encumber 50% of their total 2 acres 3 guntas land even though the entire land is notified for acquisition by the Karnataka Industrial Areas Development Board (KIADB).

“When the life of a citizen depends upon certain property, the delay that would eventually brook in payment of compensation for the acquired land, in the given circumstances of the case in particular, would metaphorically amount to taking away the oxygen mask from the gasping patient in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU),” the court observed.

If the right to life is violated when means of livelihood is taken away, the High Court said, “restraining a person from alienating his property for the raising of funds required for medical treatment of a terminal disease, is nothing short of that [of taking away the oxygen mask].”

“The writ courts being the custodians of constitutional rights of the citizens, have to individualise justice by striking a golden balance between the competing claims of individuals and the State. Otherwise, a Constitution would be a mere compendium of theories with no connect to the living law of the people,” the court observed.

Justice Krishna S. Dixit passed the order while disposing of a petition filed by T.G. Shanthamma (72), her three sons, and a daughter.

Ms. Shanthamma and her two sons are suffering from cancer and another son is a psychic patient. Her daughter, Usha H.R., is taking care of all of them with her husband but she is finding no sufficient source of income for their treatment and to repay the loan borrowed earlier from a cooperative society for the treatment by mortgaging family’s Bengaluru property, where they are living.