The Punjab and Haryana High Court in the case Krishna Devi and Others v. Balvinder Singh and Others observed and has recently held that the claimants in the proceedings under Motor Vehicles Act 1988 need to prove their case on the touchstone of preponderance of probabilities.
However, in the instant case it denied the claim while stating that the claimants had not been able to even ‘remotely prove’ the factum of accident against the alleged offending vehicle.
The bench comprising of Justice Alka Sarin observed while dealing with an appeal against the award passed by the Motor Accident Claims Tribunal, Ambala, wherein the claim petition filed by the claimant-appellants was dismissed.
It was observed by the court that the entire story set up by the claimants seems improbable in as much as the person who was a witness to a serious accident and further, was stated to have chased the offending truck for 1½ kilometers to note down its registration number and would not inform the Police when admittedly he had a mobile phone and he had been using the said mobile phone to talk to his family members from village Dhanas.
The Court noted that on record there was nothing to show that the brother of the deceased, made any effort to inform the Police about the accident as narrated by PW-2. All these circumstances make claimant’s improbable side of the story.
The court observed that there was also nothing on record to show that the brother of the deceased, on coming to know of the registration number of the offending truck Kumar on 14.07.2014 from PW-2 Ravinder, an effort was made to inform the Police about the factum of the accident as narrated by PW-2 Ravinder Kumar. Further, the Court observed that the tribe of proving the case on the touchstone of preponderance of probabilities was not met in the instant case wherein the claimants are not able to prove the factum of accident.
Accordingly, the court dismissed the instant appeal finding no illegality or infirmity in the award passed by the Tribunal.
