Delhi High Court – Orders
Iffco Tokio General Insurance Co. Ltd vs Smt Sandhya on 1 April, 2026
$~9 & 10
* IN THE HIGH COURT OF DELHI AT NEW DELHI
+ MAC.APP. 228/2021 & CM APPL. 24733/2021
IFFCO TOKIO GENERAL INSURANCE CO. LTD. .....Appellant
Through: Ms. Nidhi Sharma, Adv. for Mr.
Dhananjai Rana, Adv.
versus
SMT SANDHYA .....Respondent
Through: Mr. S.N. Parashar and Mr. Ritik Singh,
Advs.
(10)
+ MAC.APP. 264/2021
SMT SANDHYA & ANR. .....Appellants
Through: Mr. S.N. Parashar and Mr. Ritik Singh,
Advs.
versus
SUBHAM GOYAL & ORS. .....Respondents
Through: Ms. Nidhi Sharma, Adv. for Mr.
Dhananjai Rana, Adv. for Insurance
Company.
CORAM:
HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE ANISH DAYAL
ORDER
% 01.04.2026
1. Request for an adjournment has been made on behalf of Mr. Dhananjai
Rana, counsel for Insurance Company, who, despite being granted an
opportunity to appear on the second call has not appeared and is stated to be
unwell, through the proxy counsel.
2. Even on prior occasion on 25th April 2025, none had appeared for the
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Insurance Company.
3. Mr. S.N. Parashar, counsel appears for claimants and points out that
by order dated 13th September 2021, this Court had directed deposit of the
entire compensation amount; however, it stayed the disbursal till the next date
of hearing.
4. The matter has remained on Board of the Court since 2021 and no
amounts have yet been released, awaiting the hearing before this Court.
5. Considering the repeated adjournments sought by counsel for Insurance
Company, it becomes essential for the Court to examine the plea for release
of part compensation, raised by counsel for claimants.
6. It may be noticed that the Tribunal in the impugned award, had noted
an issue with the documents produced by Insurance Company and the same
were not accepted. The following paragraphs of Tribunal’s award are
extracted in this regard:
“33. It is the case of Insurance Company that the Insurance
policy in the present case was liability policy only and the
policy has been exhibited as Ex. R3W1/A. The general
exception forming part of the said exhibited policy and more
specifically exception no. 4, records that:
“Except so far as is necessary to meet the requirements
of the Motor Vehicles Act, the company shall not be
liable in respect of death or bodily injury to any person
(other than a passenger carried by reason of or in
pursuance of a contract of employment) being carried
in or upon or entering or mounting or alighting from the
Motor Vehicle at the time of the occurrence of the event
out of which any claim arises.”
34. In Oriental Insurance Co. Ltd vs Rajni Devi & Ors 2008
ACJ 1441 (SC) it was held that:
….Where, however, compensation is claimed for the
death of the owner or another passenger of the vehicle,This is a digitally signed order.
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the contract of insurance being governed by the contract
qua contract, the claim of the insurance company would
depend upon the terms thereof.
35. It is interesting to note that when the WS was filed by the
respondent/insurance company on 21.07.2016, although, it
was claimed that the policy was only liability policy, the only
document annexed to the WS is a one paged insurance policy.
This document does not indicate that it comprised of any
more pages in any manner. The respondent no. 1 and 2 were
appearing till the stage of filing of this document and it was
only after the filing of the WS and the said copy of insurance
policy by the insurance company that the respondent no. 1
and 2 stopped appearing in the present matter. When the
matter came up for respondent’s evidence in the year 2019,
the witness on behalf of insurance company R3/W1 Siddhant
Jaiswal produced a 3 paged insurance policy containing
terms and conditions which were not part of the document
earlier filed alongwith the WS. Not only the said document
has 2 more extra pages and several new terms and
conditions, I have noticed that the document filed on
21.07.2016 seem to be signed by one A. Kumar and there is
no name of any authorized signatory on the same. On the
contrary, the policy filed in the year 2019 i.e. on 07.02.2019
being Ex.R3W1/A (colly) seem to be signed by one Subrata
Mondal and the same also contains different signatures from
the one appearing on document filed on 21.07.2016.
Therefore, ex-facie the document filed alongwith WS but
never tendered in evidence and document filed with the
affidavit and exhibited are materially different.
36. The oral evidence of the witness producing the document
is completely silent on why only one page document was filed
earlier and now a completely different policy even bearing
signatures of different person, running into 3 pages have
been filed. Since this document has specifically been filed
with the evidence affidavit and it was never filed along with
WS and is also different from one filed along with WS and
there is no explanation for the difference, I cannot treat the
document as having been duly proved. I think the reason is
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obvious that the earlier document filed with the WS did not
contain the Exclusion Clause no. 5 which is now been relied
upon by the respondent/insurance company. This Tribunal
has grave suspicion and doubt regarding the genuineness of
the Ex.R3W1/A and therefore the evidence on record is not
sufficient to conclude that the original policy had any such
exclusion clause.
37. Therefore, in my view, the insurance company has failed
to produce and prove that the policy of the vehicle was only
Act only or Limited Liability Policy. The burden was
definitely on the insurance company to prove the nature of
the policy, once it had admitted that the vehicle was insured
with it and especially when the other respondents stopped
appearing in the court after the filing of WS.”
(emphasis added)
7. On this basis, the Tribunal determined the liability by holding all
respondents (therein) to be jointly and severally liable to pay the awarded
amount of compensation.
8. The Insurance Company has challenged the said award by claiming
complete exoneration.
9. Mr. Parashar, counsel for claimants, submits that even otherwise, if
the Insurance Company succeeds in their plea regarding the scope of
insurance policy as not covering passengers of the car, the decision of
Supreme Court in Sunita v. United India Insurance Co. Ltd. & Ors. 2025
INSC 867 would still apply. Relevant paragraphs of the decision of Supreme
Court are as under:
“12. The next question which arises for our consideration is
whether the Insurance Company is liable to indemnify the
compensation amount to the claimant-appellant and,
thereafter, recover the same from the driver and owner of the
vehicle.
13. Adverting to the facts in hand, from a bare perusal of the
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record, it is borne that the vehicle in question was insured
with “Liability Only Policy” and no premium was paid to
cover the driver, owner, or a gratuitous passenger travelling
therein. However, even then, in our view, the Courts below
erred in holding that the Insurance Company is not liable to
pay the compensation to the claimant-appellants, for the
principle of “Pay and Recover” ought to have been invoked.
As such, we are inclined to interfere with the above findings
of the Courts below.
14. We must advert to the exposition of this Court in National
Insurance Co. Ltd. v. Baljit Kaur. The deceased therein was
travelling as a gratuitous passenger, and due to the rash and
negligent driving of the offending vehicle, lost his life. The
Insurance Company was directed to satisfy the amount
awarded by the Courts below and recover the same from the
owner of the vehicle, as the premium was not paid by the
owner of the vehicle towards gratuitous passenger.
15. The above position has been followed by this Court in Anu
Bhanvara v. IFFCO Tokio General Insurance Co. Ltd.,
wherein the injured person was travelling as a gratuitous
passenger and was not covered under the Insurance Policy,
the driver and owner of the vehicle was held liable for
payment of compensation amount. This Court applied the
principle of “Pay and Recover” and directed the Insurance
Company to pay the amount and, thereafter, recover the same
from the owner of the vehicle.
16. The aforementioned principle was adopted by this Court
in various judgments of this Court in Amrit Lal Sood v.
Kaushalya Devi Thapar; New India Assurance Co. Ltd. v.
C.M. Jaya; National Insurance Co. Ltd. v. Challa Upendra
Rao; New India Assurance Co. Ltd. v. Vimal Devi; National
Insurance Co. Ltd. v. Saju P. Paul; Manuara Khatun v.
Rajesh Kumar Singh14; and Puttappa v. Rama Naik.
17. Applying the above expositions of law, the Courts below
ought to have directed the Insurance Company to indemnify
the amount and thereafter recover the same.”
(emphasis added)
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10. In this view of the matter, considering that it was a case involving fatal
injuries, the release of compensation cannot await the tardiness of Insurance
Company to be present in Court to canvass their appeal.
11. Accordingly, 50% of the compensation with accrued interest be
released to claimants in terms of the scheme of MACT award.
12. List on 15th September 2026.
13. Order be uploaded on the website of this Court.
ANISH DAYAL, J
APRIL 1, 2026/MK
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