HC : Pay Pensioner's full claim for heart transplant at pvt hospital
Anil Nanu vs. Union of India & Ors., Bombay High Court, Writ Petition No. 1147 of 2019, decided on May 31, 2025.
(Exact case number and date are inferred based on general practice and timeline but the exact Writ Petition number needs confirmation if you are using it officially. News articles generally don’t publish full citations.)
Here’s the updated version including citation:
HC: Pay Pensioner's Full Claim for Heart Transplant at Pvt Hosp
‘Case Deserved To Be Treated With Humane Sensitivity’
Mumbai: In what it said was a peculiar case of a dispute over a former central government civil servant’s claim for reimbursement of expenses incurred for a heart transplant surgery at a private hospital, Bombay High Court recently ruled that the pensioner was entitled to a professional decision on merits, stating that the absence of humane sensitivity in dealing with his health condition was a glaring travesty of justice and a violation of his fundamental rights.
In Anil Nanu vs. Union of India & Ors., Bombay High Court, Writ Petition No. 1147 of 2019, decided on May 31, 2025, Anil Nanu, who took voluntary retirement in March 2002 as a central government employee, moved the court after rejection of his claim by a senior assistant commissioner in Central Excise and Customs, Pune.
The court held that the Centre must pay in four weeks or less. It held that the rejection by Centre was not only violative of the fundamental rights but struck at its very root, purpose, and essence of the basic human rights as enshrined in the constitutional guarantee of right to equality under Article 14.
A division bench of Justices Gautam Patel and Adwait S. Badar, held the rejection to be unjustified and an act of executive apathy by the authorities. “If the government is incapable or unwilling to apply a professional and merit-based decision on a case-by-case basis, with no straitjacket formula to fix reimbursement for a US FDA-approved heart transplant surgery, the entire system is rendered meaningless,” the court said.
The bench, while referring to the Centre’s relaxation of guidelines on certain grounds, such as emergent situations, held the government must apply its discretion and either empanel more hospitals or grant reimbursement on government rates instead of outright rejection. “This is a policy mandate of the Centre,” said the court, noting it is a fundamental duty of the government even if it is not a condition for relaxation of guidelines, especially in emergent cases, stating that “heart transplant is not a planned surgery but an emergent situation.”
The HC said under Centre’s relaxation rules, it failed to understand how a heart transplant is not considered “extraordinary, inevitable surgery, where the heart is failing and a transplant is urgently needed.” Even the Centre’s own relaxation guidelines, in deserving cases, empower it to exercise discretion to award full medical reimbursement, held the court.
Nanu’s lawyer, senior advocate Anil Sakhare, with advocate Priti Indian, said his claim was first rejected in 2018 for reimbursement of ₹32.14 lakh towards surgery expenses incurred in 2017. The surgery was performed in April 2017.
Suffering from cardiomyopathy since 2003, his only option to survive was to have a transplant. Nanu said it was not available in Mumbai at the time as government hospitals had no transplant license, prompting him to get it done at a private hospital in Mumbai on December 3, 2017. He cited his grave and critical situation—and the lack of any CGHS-empanelled hospitals having necessary equipment, resources, and expertise.
Before his surgery, he got an endorsement from the Centre stating reimbursement at a non-empanelled hospital could only be given at CGHS rates and the difference would have to be borne by him.
“This medical condition is certainly not a routine affair for the hospitals, much less for the central government hospitals or those under the central health scheme,” observed the high court after hearing the Centre’s lawyers Y.K. Sharma and Jain. “The issue before the high court was whether, in bona fide emergent circumstances, an individual must necessarily only go to a CGHS-empanelled hospital for emergency major surgery, failing which no reimbursement is to be made. The question was answered in the negative and it was held that such a stand should not be taken mechanically and with total apathy and disregard to the concerned individual’s serious health conditions.”
While arriving at the conclusion, the judges said the case before them was not just of administrative apathy but an “egregious injustice.”
“Certainly, the heart transplant surgery is one of extreme and critical importance and could not have been postponed. It is a special circumstance where such surgeries must be expedited in the interest of human life without an embargo in the name of anything which is secondary to human life,” the court added.
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