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‘Daughters too care for old parents’: Tribunal awards Rs 20.86 lakh compensation to deceased woman’s kin
The victim, Anu, had died in an accident in 2015 when a car rammed her Activa scooter when she was on her way to office.
The Motor Accidents Claims Tribunal (MACT) on Wednesday directed the United India Insurance Company and the owner of a vehicle in an accident case to pay Rs 20.86 lakh to the parents of a woman who had died in the accident.
“Not just sons, daughters too take care of their old parents,” the tribunal ruled, while dismissing the insurance company’s argument that the deceased Anu, 34, “was an unmarried girl. With the passage of time, she would have got married and consequently, her contribution to the parents would have been reduced”.
Anu died in an accident in 2015 when a car rammed her Activa scooter when she was on her way to office. The car was driven by Husan Chand, who hails from Una in Himachal Pradesh.
The tribunal had held that the vehicle driver and owner, Chand, was guilty of rash and negligent driving and directed him and the insurance company to pay the compensation amount “jointly and severally” to Anu’s father Dharampal Mago, 60, and Madhu Mago, 58.
The tribunal directed that the compensation amount of Rs 20.86 lakh with 7.5 per cent interest is to be paid within 2 months. It also said that if the amount was not paid within the stipulated time, the claim will have to be paid with 9 per cent interest.
“It is an overrated concept of the past that only the son can look after the parents in their old age. In these days, even the daughters not only provide physical and moral support, but also make financial contribution, while rendering old age services to the parents,” the tribunal presided over by Vivek Puri, district and session judge, Mohali ruled.
Anu was working as a technical manager at ICAII Institute in Mohali. On September 29, 2015, the day the accident took place, Anu was going to her office in Mohali. On the dividing road of Phase 3B2/Sector 71, she had just reached the PCL roundabout when the car, driven at high speed by Chand, hit her.
Anu was rushed to the Civil Hospital in Phase 6, Mohali, from where she was referred to GMCH, Sector 32, Chandigarh, where she died on October 4, 2015.
During the hearing, Chand denied that any accident had taken place and claimed that the FIR was lodged with the connivance of the police and that he had been acquitted by the Mohali district court in 2018. The insurance company had claimed that they were not liable to pay any compensation as the accident took place due the negligence of the deceased, Anu.
Recalling the accident, Anu’s father Dharampal Mago, who had witnessed the accident, said, “I saw my daughter flipped in the air as the car hit her scooter. That is all I can remember as I froze and fell on the ground.”
“Someone shook me and told me that my daughter is still breathing,” Mago, who retired from the Swaraj tractor factory, said. Mago was out on a walk when he witnessed the accident barely 10 feet away from where he was.
“She had refused to get married as she wanted to take care of us as age was catching up,” said Mago, trying hard to control the tears welling in his eyes.
Anu’s death was just the beginning of the Mago family’s miseries. Dharampal’s son who had gone abroad in 2012 was still settling down when Anu died. He was to return in July 2016 when he suffered a brain stroke at the Delhi airport that left him bedridden. Since Anu’s death, he has survived two brain strokes and a brain hemorrhage.
Mago is working at a chemist’s shop now in Mohali. “Chand who had caused the accident visited me at the hospital and even came to our home. He was working as a teacher at Nurpur Bedi in Himachal Pradesh,” said Mago.
“Initially I did not want to any case registered but the hospital refused to hand over Anu’s body after her death till we lodged an FIR,” recalls Mago.
