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Deep Shikha v. National Insurance Company Ltd.

Civil Appeal · 2025 INSC 675Decided 13 May 2025
Civil Appeal Nos. 6641–6642 of 2025 (arising from Special Leave Petition (Civil) Nos. 22265–22266 of 2018)
Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia · Justice K. Vinod Chandran

Background

Smt. Paras Sharma died in a 2008 road accident in Rajasthan when a bus took a sudden turn and ran over her while she was riding her two-wheeler. Her married daughter and elderly mother filed a claim for compensation of over Rs. 54 lakh. The Motor Accident Claims Tribunal awarded about Rs. 16 lakh, but the Rajasthan High Court, relying on an earlier Supreme Court ruling (Manjuri Bera), reduced the married daughter's award to a token Rs. 50,000 and denied the mother's claim entirely, holding that neither was a proven "dependent" of the deceased.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court agreed that the married daughter, having no proof she was financially dependent on her mother after marriage, was correctly limited to the small statutory no-fault-liability amount under Section 140 of the Motor Vehicles Act. However, it held the High Court was wrong to deny the mother any compensation: at 70 years old, living with her deceased daughter, with no independent income, she was in fact solely dependent on her and legally entitled to be maintained by her child. The Court then recalculated compensation for the mother from scratch using the settled Sarla Verma/Pranay Sethi factors (future income prospects, funeral expenses, loss of estate, and loss of filial consortium) arriving at an enhanced award of Rs. 19,22,356.

Lesson Learnt

Being a legal heir is not, by itself, enough to claim dependency compensation after a motor accident death, actual financial dependence must be shown, but an elderly parent who lived with and relied entirely on the deceased for support will be recognised as a genuine dependent, distinct from a married child who has moved into her own household.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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