F.A.O.NO. 399 OF 1993 1 IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA AT CHANDIGARH F.A.O.NO. 399 OF 1993 Date of decision:8th February, 2011 Sukhdevi and others .......Appellants Versus Ashwani Kumar and others ........Respondents BEFORE: HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE K.KANNAN Present: Mr. S.K.Chauhan, Advocate for Mr. Raj Mohan Singh, Advocate, for the appellants. Mr. Ravinder Arora, Advocate and Mr. Neeraj Khanna, Advocate, for the United India Insurance Company. 1. Whether Reporters of local papers may be allowed to see the judgment? No 2. To be referred to the Reporters or not?No 3. Whether the judgment should be reported in the Digest? No K.Kannan, J.(Oral) 1. The appeal is against the dismissal of the petition for compensation at the instance of the legal representatives of the deceased who was alleged to have been crushed to death by the rash and negligent driving of the first respondent's car. The accident was said to have taken place, as narrated by PW-3 police constable Ram F.A.O.NO. 399 OF 1993 2 Kishan on 20.09.1990, when he was posted as head constable at Ambala cantonment. He had come out of the police station and he saw a person lying on the G.T.road in injured condition, he identified the injured person to be one Balbir Singh(deceased) who was a constable in the same police station. At that time the car driven by the first respondent came without lights and ran over Balbir Singh's body and dragged him to 5 - 6 feets on the G.T.road. This incident was denied by the first respondent Ashwani Kumar and he stated that when he was proceeding along with the main road his car was stopped by some police official and a false case has been registered against him. According to him, there was no accident involving his vehicle and he had been falsely implicated. It transpires that ultimately the police themselves had given a report to the Magistrate that evidence could not be collected to implicate the first respondent and hence he was discharged by the Magistrate. In a case where the person against whom an averment is made as a person who had caused the accident and he denies the same, the duty shall be on the claimant to establish the involvement of the vehicle. If the case must depend upon the evidence of PW-3, In my view the evidence was hardly sufficient to implicate the first respondent. 2. Learned counsel appearing for the appellant states that the first respondent had admitted in his evidence that there were three persons in the car and that only one had been examined. I can not take this to be a point in support of the claimant when the claimant F.A.O.NO. 399 OF 1993 3 gave no evidence when PW-3 had said that the deceased was already lying injured on the road and he had seen him to know that he was the constable from the very same police station. It was a National Highway and if there had made an identification that he was a constable from the same police station, he must have stood around injured person in close proximity and the vehicle that runs over such an injured person could not have done so without injuring others in the immediate proximity as well. If the vehicle had run over the deceased then forensic evidence must have been made available to show blood stains or any other important evidence connecting the car to the accident. There ought to have been blood stains on the tyre or any part of the vehicle. It is again not conceivable in such a situation that the police would give a report of mistake of the fact to a Magistrate to have the accused discharged. The quality of evidence placed before the Court was hardly sufficient to implicate the first respondent vehicle. Even the post mortem certificate which is on the record is not decipherable to find whether the person died only due to injuries or the death could have been caused only by vehicle running over to body of the deceased. Even the doctor who had made the post mortem had not been examined and particularly in a case where there existed a serious doubt whether the deceased was run over by the first respondent car. 3. Dismissal of the petition was an obvious out come of the poor quality of evidence tendered before the Tribunal. I find no F.A.O.NO. 399 OF 1993 4 better reasons to score for the benefit of the appellants and shall confirm the award and dismiss the appeal [K.KANNAN] JUDGE 8th February, 2011 Shivani Kaushik