The Motor Accident Claims Tribunal (MACT) has ruled that a poor person, run over by a speeding car while sleeping on a pavement, cannot be blamed for the accident and be deprived of the damages from the firm insuring the vehicle. While awarding a sum of `19,000 each to destitutes Rashid and Sajjan, injured in 2009 by a speeding car, MACT judge Swarna Kanta Sharma, observed, “I do not find any merit in the contentions of the counsel for insurance company since majority of destitute and poor in this city are compelled to sleep on the pavements. It is poverty which compels them to sleep on the pavement and not because they happily want to do so.”
Rejecting the claim of the insurance firm that the duo were partly responsible for the accident as they slept by the roadside and committed “contributory negligence” to the injury, the judge said, denying compensation to the duo would mean that “we are holding them guilty because of their poverty.” We are living in a welfare state, the poor who have no roof over their head and are forced by circumstances to spend night on the pavement cannot be held guilty.” Taking into consideration, the fact that the two were unable to work for some time due to injuries, the court awarded the compensation, and said, “In the present case, Rashid and Sajjan were lucky that they have escaped with simple injuries, otherwise incidents are not unknown of such vehicles having gone to pavements and crushed people to death.”