Prakash Krishna, J. - (1.) Common questions of law and facts are involved in all these revisions and they are heard together and are being disposed of by a common judgment. All these revisions arise out of similar kind of orders passed by the Motor Accidents Claims Tribunal. Therefore, to appreciate the controversy involved in the present case the facts of Civil Revision No. 83 of 2001 are referred.
(2.) Claim Petition No. 126 of 1997 was filed by Ram Babu under sections 166 and 140 of Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 claiming damages for the injuries suffered by him in a motor accident dated 4.3.1997 at about 8 p.m., in village Kusahari near Sagar Hotel, Kanpur-Lucknow Road, District Unnao, while he was travelling from Barabanki to Kanpur on the pleas, inter alia, that the driver of bus No. UP 030-8281 in which the claimant was a valid passenger stopped the bus near a hotel for a break. A dispute arose in between the driver and the owner of the hotel and there was marpeet with the hotel personnel. The conductor asked the passengers to board the bus. The driver started the bus and hotel owner and its persons threw some inflammable goods on the driver through the window and as soon as the bus started it caught fire. The driver instead of stopping bus to save himself negligently and rashly speeded up the bus and the fire spread in the bus with the result that the claimant and other passengers received injuries. Number of passengers received burnt injuries and were got admitted in a government hospital and some of them were later on transferred to Lala Lajpat Rai Hospital.
(3.) In the claim application after the exchange of pleadings issues were struck. Issue No. 4 was treated as a preliminary issue which reads as follows: "Kya vertman case me dhara 147/307/435/504 Bhartiya Danda Sanhita me darj hone ke karan kshti-purti kee yachika prastut nahi ho sakti hai. Jiske parinamswaroop is nyalaya ko kshetradhikar nahi hai. Yadi ho to uska prabhav.";