Chennai: The Madras high court has directed that payment to the beneficiary in a road accident claim through e-transfer into the claimant's bank account
They said: “This, in our opinion, would be a game changer and afford a real possibility to claimants to take control over their lives, after the traumatic accident, by having full control over the award sum, with which they have to manage their lives. Once the award sum is directly transferred to their bank account, the claimants can deal with the same and pay out reasonable legal costs and expenses, as they may be obliged to”.
The ‘leakage’ that the humane judges had mentioned in their order, according to a senior lawyer, refers to the age-old and widely prevalent malady in the handling of compensation claims-particularly relating to accidents and land acquisition-wherein some advocates collaborate with the police and at times even sections of lower judiciary and unscrupulous elements in the insurance and banking industries to strike gold in bagging a hefty compensation from the courts while the beneficiary got only a pittance.
The rest of the money got shared among the ‘other stakeholders’, explained the lawyer. He requested anonymity for obvious reasons. The present order was passed by the bench while dealing with a case of an accident claim.
The judges reduced the compensation of Rs 91.72 lakh awarded by the Motor Accidents Claims Tribunal to Rs 82 lakh to the family of a 29-year-old software engineer, T. Sakthivel, who was killed by a truck at Medavakkam in Chennai on October 12, 2013. Of the final compensation awarded, the deceased's wife would get '69 lakh and mother Rs 13 lakh.
