A speeding car hit my uncle, who suffered major injuries. Neither my uncle nor anyone around could note the registration number of the car as it sped away. How can my uncle make a claim as a third party?
Sameer Kochar, Chandigarh
It seems like an unfortunate event and hope your uncle’s injuries have not impacted his mobility. According to the IRDAI, when filing a claim as a third party, it is important to identify the offending vehicle. It is unfortunate that no one could note the vehicle number in the hit and run incident. We hope you did report the incident to the police, which is a must, and they are able to identify the culprit soon. Unfortunately, without any identification of the vehicle that hit your uncle, you cannot raise an insurance claim if the vehicle that hit him is not traced.
However, according to the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988, in hit and run cases the Motor Vehicle law is also a social legislation and its provisions are designed to protect the rights of road accident victims where the identity of motor vehicle causing the accident cannot be established.
The relevant legal provision is mentioned in Section 161 of Motor Vehicles Act where a “hit and run motor accident” is defined as an accident arising out of the use of a motor vehicle or motor vehicles the identity whereof cannot be ascertained in spite of reasonable efforts for the purpose. According to the IRDAI, this scheme came into force from October 1, 1982 and the section that provides for payment of compensation (solatium) is as follows – in case of the death of any person resulting from a hit and run motor accident, a fixed sum of Rs 25,000 is paid. And, in case of grievous hurt to any person resulting from a hit and run motor accident, a fixed sum of Rs 12,500 is paid.
As the victim of the “hit-and-run” vehicle, your uncle or even you can make an application to the claim enquiry officer in each Taluka. After due enquiries, the claims enquiry officer will submit a report together with certificate of post mortem or injury certificate to the claims settlement commissioner who will either be the district collector or the deputy commissioner at the district level. He will process the claims and sanction the payment within 15 days from the receipt of report from claim enquiry officer and communicate sanction order to the nominated office of the insurance company. The compensation under hit and run accident cases are made from a solatium fund which is contributed by the general insurance industry under an agreed formula.
