A 101-year-old man, Nadar Singh, a resident of Hizrawan Kalan village in Fatehabad district, met the City Magistrate in Hisar today to claim that he was eligible for the government pension meant for freedom fighters. He said he had participated in the freedom struggle and had been jailed in Lahore before Independence. He also claimed to have been associated with the Indian National Army (INA), though he had no records to substantiate the claim.Nadar Singh, accompanied by his son, Swaroop Singh, visited the Mini Secretariat in Hisar and met City Magistrate Hari Ram. The magistrate referred his application and the documents he submitted in support of his claim to the concerned department for further verification.Nadar Singh said he had relevant documents, but some of them had been destroyed in a mishap many years ago.However, Karan Singh, husband of village sarpanch Paramjeet Kaur, told The Tribune that he had tried to get Nadar Singh’s claim verified by the district authorities in Fatehabad as well as the higher authorities in Chandigarh. He said the concerned department of the Haryana Government, which maintains records of freedom fighters and disburses their pensions, could not find any reference to Nadar Singh’s name in its records.During his visit to the DC office in Hisar today, Nadar Singh said he had been running from pillar to post for nearly several years to get a freedom fighter’s pension. He is, however, receiving an old-age pension.His son said Nadar Singh had forgotten many details of his past because of his advanced age. Nadar Singh claimed that he had been picked up by the British police for raising slogans in support of freedom and had been blindfolded and taken to a jail in Lahore, where he remained for three months.Swaroop Singh said the family had migrated to Haryana from Pakistan during Partition and initially settled in Hisar district. He claimed that all documents related to his father’s freedom-fighter status had been destroyed in a fire at their house about four decades ago. However, he said, a card issued by the district administration identifying Nadar Singh as a freedom fighter had survived in his pocket, though it was no longer legible.Swaroop Singh said he and his three brothers were uneducated and therefore did not know the procedure for applying for a freedom fighter’s pension. He said the Fatehabad district administration had honoured Nadar Singh as a freedom fighter.The then minister Ranjit Singh had also tried to help the family secure the pension, and they submitted the documents to the administration, he said. However, about three months later, they received a reply from Chandigarh stating that the department did not have his documents, Swaroop Singh added.He said another unfortunate twist came in 2023, when Nadar Singh was declared dead in official documents by the Fatehabad district administration. His status was later corrected to show that he was alive. Even a memorial was installed in the village on Independence Day in 2023, bearing the word “late” before Nadar Singh’s name.Nadar Singh, however, personally visited the memorial carrying documents to establish his identity and demonstrated that he could still walk on his own.Karan Singh, husband of the village sarpanch, maintained that the memorial had not been installed by the panchayat but under an administrative scheme. He said the word “late” was later removed from the stone.