- (1.) Challenge in this appeal is to the judgment and award dated 16th September, 2005, whereby the Motor Accident Claims Tribunal, Jaipur District, Jaipur (hereinafter to be referred as the 'Tribunal'), decreed an amount of Rs. 13, 83,000/- in favour of the claimants-respondents no. 1 to 5 and against the appellant and respondents no. 6 and 7, to be paid jointly and severally.
(2.) Skipping unnecessary details, the facts of the case in brief are that on 12th November, 2002, at about 4:00 pm Prahlad Meena died in an accident having caused by the driver of the tractor bearing Registration No. RJ-14-2C-0389. The dependents of the deceased filed a claim petition before the Tribunal and the Tribunal after conclusion of the trial of the claim petition, decreed the aforesaid amount.
(3.) Albeit, the appellant has enumerated so many grounds in memo of appeal, but the learned counsel appearing for the Insurance Company concentrated his arguments only on the ground of income of the deceased estimated by the Tribunal for the purpose of computing the loss of dependency. Learned counsel for the appellant took me through the statements of witnesses and other relevant documents and contended that despite there being no cogent and trustworthy evidence with regard to the income of Rs. 8,000/- of the deceased, the Tribunal estimated his income to be Rs. 8,000/- per month and keeping in view the prospective increase, considered Rs. 10,000/- to be the total monthly income of the deceased for reckoning the quantum of compensation, which is abysmally high in the facts and circumstances of the case. Albeit, the deceased is said to have been raising income through the occupation of being an LIC agent, ploughing fields of others by tractor and trading of buffaloes, but the dependents have not produced any evidence to substantiate the same. Bare oral testimony in this regard is not suffice to evince such an exorbitant income, hence, the income so estimated by the Tribunal be reduced to an apposite level say of Rs. 4,000/- or Rs. 5,000/- and thereafter applying the prescribed multiplier, the quantum of compensation may be computed.;