- (1.) Heard Sri Ajay Singh learned Counsel for the appellants and Sri Vinod Kumar Dwivedi learned Counsel for the claimant respondents. This is a First Appeal from Order under section 173 of the Motor Vehicle Act, 1988 against the judgment and order dated 8.9.2000 passed in Motor Accidents Claim Petition No. 149 of 1995 by the Motor Accidents Claim Tribunal/IV Additional District Judge, Basti (Ram Surat v. U.P.S.R.T.C.).
(2.) Learned Counsel for the appellants has submitted that the claimant respondents who are parents of the deceased Shiv Poojan aged about 14 years at the time of his death were not eye-witnesses to the accident and therefore they could not depose with respect to factum of the accident and as such when the eye-witness namely Surendra Prasad left for Bombay on the same day of accident after lodging FIR it raises a suspicion since he returned on getting information at Bombay regarding the accident and death of Shiv Poojan. It is also submitted that the deduction for the amounts which the deceased would have spent on himself if he had not died has not been considered by the impugned order and therefore the same requires to be set aside.
(3.) Learned Counsel for the respondents has contested the submission and has submitted that Surendra Prasad was the eye-witness to the incident and he had noted the number of the bus of the Corporation at the scene of the accident and had lodged FIR. Therefore, if he left for Bombay on the very same day and came back on learning of the death of Shiv Poojan it does not raise any suspicious circumstance regarding his testimony therefore the submission that the parents of the deceased were not eye-witness and could not depose on the factum of the accident does not have any relevance.;