F.A.O.NO. 3798 OF 2005 and F.A.O.NO. 3955 OF 2005 1 IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA AT CHANDIGARH F.A.O.NO. 3798 OF 2005 Date of decision:1st September, 2010 The Oriental Insurance Company Limited through its Assistant Manager, Sector 17, Chandigarh. .......Appellant Versus Smt. Mohindro Devi and others ........Respondents F.A.O.No. 3955 of 2005 Smt. Mohindro Devi and others ........Appellant Versus Vijay Kumar and others ........Respondents BEFORE: HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE K.KANNAN Present: Mr. V.Chaudhary, Advocate, for the Insurance Company. None for the claimants/respondents. 1. Whether Reporters of local papers may be allowed to see the judgment? Yes/No 2. To be referred to the Reporters or not?Yes/No 3. Whether the judgment should be reported in the Digest? Yes/No K.Kannan, J.(Oral) 1. Both the appeals arise out of the same accident, FAO No. 3798 of 2005 filed at the instance of the Insurance Company denying the involvement of the vehicle and FAO No. 3955 of F.A.O.NO. 3798 OF 2005 and F.A.O.NO. 3955 OF 2005 2 2005 filed by the claimant for enhancement. There is no appearance on behalf of the claimant. 2. Questioning the involvement of the vehicle in the accident, learned counsel for the insurer points out that three wheeler which is said to have been involved in the accident was alleged to have carried six or seven persons and only as regards the deceased there had been hospital records and if it was an accident of such a magnitude to result in death of a passenger, it was most unlikely that six passengers had injuries but none of them has taken treatment in the hospital and no hospital records were available. The contention therefore, is that the accident could not have been true. This, according to the counsel for the appellant has to be considered in the reference to the fact that the person who had given the complaint before the police was his own brother-in-law and he had not given details of the vehicle number or the name of the driver. 3. I am not convinced with the argument that since the co-passengers had no medical records to claim that they have been injured or that no other claim petition had been filed, there could not have been an accident at all. It depends on the fact situation in each case and there could be no rule of thumb that when six or seven passengers travel in a vehicle there cannot be a case of death of merely one passenger and others had only light injuries which did not require compensation claims to be filed. The inference made by the learned counsel for the appellant is non-sequeter. F.A.O.NO. 3798 OF 2005 and F.A.O.NO. 3955 OF 2005 3 4. As regards even the issue relating to the FIR and the lack of details relating to the non mentioning of the name of the driver, I do not think that it has any bearing for the FIR that had been registered on the very same day on 26.07.2001 and the vehicle had also been seized by the police and subsequently released on superdari from the Criminal Court. It was elicited through the evidence of PW-1 that a case had been registered against the driver of the vehicle soon after the accident and a Criminal Court case was pending. These are corroborative facts of the incident and the involvement of the vehicle. I do not think that the Tribunal was in error in accepting the claimants' version that the insured's vehicle was involved in the accident. The appeal by the Insurance Company challenging the award is rejected and the award is confirmed. The appeal is dismissed 5. Since there is no appearance for the claimants for the challenge against quantum, I am not entering into details of quantum on merits. FAO 3955 of 2005 is also dismissed for default for appearance of the appellants. [K.KANNAN] JUDGE 1st September, 2010 Shivani Kaushik