Rajasthan High Court - Jaipur
Icici Lombard General Insurance Co Ltd vs Smt Shanti Devi And Others on 9 November, 2011
Author: Mohammad Rafiq
Bench: Mohammad Rafiq
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE FOR RAJASTHAN BENCH AT JAIPUR S.B. CIVIL MISC. APPEAL NO.4312/2011 ICICI Lombard General Insurance Co. Ltd. vs. Smt. Shanti Devi & Ors. Date of order : 9/11/2011. HON'BLE MR.JUSTICE MOHAMMAD RAFIQ Shri Vishal Jain for the appellant. Shri Ram Sharan for the respondents.
****** This appeal has been preferred against the award of the learned Motor Accident Claims Tribunal dated 20.6.2011.
Contention of the learned counsel for the appellant is that originally when the FIR was registered the number of the vehicle was disclosed as RJ14 SH 3012, whereas subsequently an application was made by the informant to the investigating agency that due to confusion the serial no.`SH' has been given, whereas in fact it was `HS'. It was contended that in the postmortem report, age of the deceased has been wrongly mentioned as 55 years, in fact his age would have been more than 70 years, which is because in the ration card of the family that was made in 2001, his age was mentioned as 63 years and therefore when the accident took place, he was more than 70 years of age. Learned counsel argued that the multiplier of 11 has wrongly been applied and even at the age of 55, it should be 9 as per the ratio of judgement of Supreme Court in Sarla Verma & Ors. vs. Delhi Transport Corporation & Anr. (2009) 6 SCC 121. It was also submitted that son of the deceased AW-3 Rajendra Kumar has stated that his father has left the house with a bicycle but the other evidence suggests that accident took place while he was walking. The story therefore does not inspire any confidence.
Shri Ram Sharan, learned counsel for the respondent-claimants opposed the appeal and has argued that in fact AW-3 Rajendra Kumar in cross examination clarified on enquiry as employee of the deceased. It was found that he has left the bicycle there and came. As regards the confusion relating to series of registration, learned counsel submitted that it was bona fide mistake on the part of the lodger of the first information report namely son of the deceased Rajendra Kumar and he on the very next day appeared and admitted his bona fide mistake by communication stating 'HS' series to be the correct series of the vehicle. It was argued that this was a bona fide mistake otherwise vehicle supra was the same. Learned counsel submitted that ration card did not indicate the correct age, which generally happens with the Government staff preparing ration card and the voters I.D. cards etc. The age of the deceased was disclosed to be 55 years in the postmortem report and on that basis multiplier of 11 has correctly been applied.
On hearing the learned counsel parties and perusing the material on record, I find that in so far as multiplier is concerned as per the judgement of Supreme Court in Sarla Verma, supra the correct multiplier would be 11 for the age of 55 years. In the present case, the mere fact that age of the deceased in ration card was mentioned as 63 years when it was prepared in the year 2001 cannot be accepted the only proof of his age because the correctness thereof is disputed. The widow of the deceased namely AW-1 Shanti Devi in his statement has mentioned the age of her husband to be 52 years at the time of accident. The postmortem report indicates his age to be 55 years and therefore the multiplier of 11 has been applied. Even otherwise, the total compensation that has been awarded for the loss of dependency after deducting 1/3rd towards self expenses by assuming the income of the deceased to be Rs.3,000, the amount comes to Rs.2,64,000/-, which is sufficient in the facts of the present case.
I therefore do not find any infirmity in the impugned award. The appeal is dismissed.
(MOHAMMAD RAFIQ), J.
RS/-