Karnataka HC enhances compensation for accident victim’s family, cites inflation

Highlights

• Observing that courts and tribunals need to be alive to changing situations while deciding cases relating to compensation payable in accident cases, the High Court enhanced compensation from Rs 5.40 lakh to Rs 11 lakh, with 6 per cent interest, to be paid by KSRTC to the family of a 17-year-old boy. The teenager from Bengaluru, a Class 10 student, died in a road accident involving a KSRTC bus in 2013.

• Partly allowing the appeal filed by the victim’s parents, the court said the value of the rupee in 1992 was far more than the value of the rupee in 2013. Consequently, the cost of living has gone up. Wages have also witnessed upward revision. The logical corollary is that ‘notional income’ to assess compensation for the death in 2013, should be more than the notional income fixed in 1992, the court said.

• On January 31, 2015, the tribunal awarded compensation, taking Rs 30,000 per annum as notional income of the deceased DY Ravikumar in 1992, in the absence of any proof relating to his income, to calculate the ‘loss of dependency’. The victim’s family — S Yallappa, his wife and son from Mallasandra — moved the high court, seeking enhancement of compensation.

PIL SEEKING SECURITY FOR JUDGE DIS

The High Court on Monday dismissed a PIL filed by a Tumakuru-based advocate, seeking direction to provide Y+ or Z security to Justice HP Sandesh of the High Court, and to constitute a SIT to probe the ‘transfer threat’, due to lack of merits and subjudice, as the matter is pending before the Supreme Court. A division bench of Acting Chief Justice Alok Aradhe and Justice S Vishwajith Shetty dismissed the petition filed by L Ramesh Naik.   Noting that the petitioner, neither in his e-mail nor petition, stated that the existing security provided to Justice Sandesh is inadequate, the court observed that the state government in any case is under obligation to provide adequate security to judges.