HC upholds Rs 62 lakh compensation to family of SRK's production house employee

Perfect compensation is hardly possible, but a fair one must be a norm, the Bombay High Court has said, upholding Rs 62 lakh given to the family of an employee with actor Shah Rukh Khan's production house, who sustained injuries in a hit-and-run and died later.

A bench of justices Girish Kulkarni and Advait Sethna on 9 May said it did not find any perversity, illegality or irregularity in the November 2020 order passed by a tribunal and refused to quash it.

It said that the Motor Vehicles Act was a "beneficial piece of legislation", and the court cannot overlook the fundamental right guaranteed to a citizen under Article 21 involving the right to live a healthy life with dignity.

Referring to a Supreme Court judgment, the high court said money cannot substitute loss of life, but an effort must be made to grant compensation where the money could compensate for the damages incurred.

"Perfect compensation is hardly possible, but fair compensation ought to be the norm," the court observed.

The court said the least that could be done to serve the ends of justice was to uphold the grant of Rs 62 lakh compensation to the family of Charu Khandal, an animator with Khan's production house, Red Chillies Entertainment.

The court, in its order, said this was a "heart-wrenching and a tragic saga" of a young aspiring professional woman who did not deserve the life that she went through after the accident leading to the final sacrifice of her life.

Khandal, who worked on the VFX for Khan's film "Ra.One", died in 2017, five years after she suffered paralysis following an accident involving a speeding car that rammed into an autorickshaw she was travelling in.

She had been paralysed neck-down after suffering cervical spinal cord injuries in an accident in suburban Oshiwara in March 2012.

Khandal was 28 years old when she met with the accident while returning from a party to celebrate her team winning an award for the movie.

The bench dismissed the petition filed by Cholamandalam MS General Insurance Co. Ltd, challenging the tribunal's order.

Khandal's family, after the accident, had filed a claim for compensation before the Motor Accident Claim Tribunal in June 2014, and the tribunal awarded a compensation of Rs 62 lakh in November 2020.

The insurance company, in its appeal to the high court, claimed there was no nexus between the death of the woman and the injuries suffered by her in the accident and that she had died more than four years after it.

The tribunal had erroneously assumed that the death may have occurred due to the quadriplegic condition of the woman, the company claimed.

The high court, however, refused to accept this contention and said the cause of death was septicaemia, which was due to the traumatic quadriplegia.

The high court noted that Khandal's family had incurred Rs 18 lakh in medical bills.

The bench said it did not find any infirmity with the tribunal's findings that throughout five years, Khandal, who was paralysed, would have required an attendant and physiotherapy sessions.

"It would be extremely harsh, excessive and rather too pedantic an approach in such matters of life and death if we are to assess every single medical bill with mathematical accuracy, which is not what the law would mandate," it stated.

The bench said the insurance company cannot take a hyper-technical view and wriggle out of the insurance policy to ultimately deprive the victim's family of what they legally deserve.