Amita Victor Amalraj vs Bachubhai Karsanbhai Brahman and Others

S.D. Dave, J.—This first appeal has been directed against the award made by the M.A.C.T. (main), Rajkot, in M.A.C. Case No. 375 of 1979; decided on November 19th, 1980, granting the total compensation in a sum of Rs. 54,000/- to the applicant Amita Victor Amalraj for the accidental death of her husband, Victor Amalraj, during the motor vehicular accident which had occurred on 27th June, 1979, at about 2.30 p.m. on Jamnagar-Rajkot State Highway on the bridge of river Dodi near Padadhari because of the dash given to the jeep car being driven by "the deceased by the motor truck No. GTP 5070 being driven by the opponent No. 2, the driver, and owned by and insured with the opponent Nos. 1 and 3.

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We may now revert to what has been referred to by us earlier. Neither we, nor the learned advocates appealing on behalf of the parties before us, could overlook two alarmingly disturbing features emanating from the trial before the Tribunal. One is the prejudice of the Tribunal culminated in the finding that the deceased must be spending away about more than fifty per cent of his income in ''eating and drinking outside'', a prejudice which appeals to be the outcome of the creative conjecture of the Tribunal or an intuition, not repeat, not at all based upon any evidence worth its name! The second one is the silent participation on the part of the Tribunal in the persecution of the claimant widow during the course of the trial. The Tribunals and the Judges prepare judgments either in the cosy chambers or in the overcrowded court rooms and many a time it is taken for granted that nobody acts as a watchdog on this part of the Judges'' duty. If this is really so, the conscience of the author of the judgment shall have to be more introspective and objective.

(Emphasis added)

It was indeed suggested to the claimant, the widow of the deceased and the real victim of the motor vehicular accident, while she was in the witness-box of the Tribunal, that her husband was having a liquor permit, which suggestion (we do not know how it came to be made) was persistently denied by her. A repelled suggestion never assumes the shape of an admission. Suggestion repeated often, even with greater vehemence, remains but a suggestion. Despite this, the said suggestion, on mere repetition, has assumed the significance of a substantive piece of evidence affecting the finding. The Tribunal, it appears, has accepted the oft made suggestion without any basis and though had consciously avoided to rule so in clear words, in fact, has slashed down the dependency loss to less than fifty per cent of the monthly pay of the deceased by saying in the judgment that the deceased must be spending fifty per cent of his income in ''eating and drinking outside''. Nobody can ever urge that the meaning sought to be conveyed was innocent, namely, that the deceased was required to take his meals outside of the house. If that was the real meaning sought to be conveyed, it could have been done so, very easily and clearly too. The learned advocate appealing not only on behalf of the original claimant but on behalf of the insurer also has labelled those words appealing in the judgment as ''not in good taste''. Not in good taste, definitely the words are. But our concern goes further and not that far only. The learned Tribunal has allowed its judgment to be tainted with its own prejudices. A judicial officer manning the court or the Tribunal is expected only to record, read and ultimately appreciate the evidence as it is made available. In no sphere of his duty as a judicial officer, he is expected or permitted to add to the evidence. If he has got something to add to the evidence, he has got to get down from the chair and assume the stand in the witness-box. He has got to cease to be Judge of a cause and has got to be a witness, either for or against a cause. The Tribunal when has allowed the personal prejudices to play an effective role, we feel that it is nothing but adding to evidence in a cause which was entrusted to the Tribunal for judging.

(Emphasis added)

The other feature which has disturbed us relates to the questions put to the claimant widow in respect of her ''second marriage''. There is no clear elucidation, so far, of a proposition of law by this High Court saying that a widow who enters in the second marriage shall not be entitled to any compensation whatsoever. In fact, some of the High Courts in this country have, even in such cases, allowed some compensation to the widow of the victim of the accident, who marries again during the pendency of the trial or the appeal. This wide question of utmost importance does not arise for our consideration in the present First Appeal and naturally, therefore, we express no opinion on the same, leaving it open for examination and opinion. But, thus far, the general impression in the minds of all concerned is that the widow must say on oath while in the witness-box of the Tribunal that she has not entered in a second marriage. In the case on hand also, the claimant has said so and then starts the humiliation of a victim within the court room. The Tribunal has allowed a lot many questions to be asked in respect of her own community, the different community to which her deceased husband belonged, the religion which she was following before and after her marriage and the form of the marriage with the deceased, though the factum of the marriage was never denied. The question is-why all this? It was really forgotten by all concerned that a young woman who had lost her husband at the age of about twenty-five years, had gone to the Tribunal for securing some amount of compensation to which she was legally entitled under the ''law of the land'' and not for her humiliation or scandal or for opening of the old scars. We feel that her statement on oath, that she has not entered into the second marriage, in absence of any evidence to the contrary, would have been enough. We would not have voiced our concern this elaborately, had one of us (Dave, J.) not come across a case recently in which a Tribunal has adopted a small multiplier saying that ''the young, issueless woman belonging to a particular community in which there is no prohibition for a second marriage would get remarried in a near future-and a case in which a Tribunal has said that ''the claimant, a young widow, would be disposed of in second marriage within a short time''. We would conclude this unhappy note by saying that neither the court rooms nor the orders of the Tribunals are meant to serve as protected places where a claimant widow can be humiliated, and insulted in this fashion. The permanent records are not meant for making permanent scandals of the helpless victims of ever increasing motor vehicular accidents.