3-yr-old gets Rs 92L for parents’ death in accident

Kavinaya was just 75 days old when her software engineer father and mother were fatally knocked down by a recklessly driven sand-laden truck in Chennai. Now, about three years later, a city court has awarded her nearly Rs 92 lakh compensation. While Rs 50 lakh will kept in her name in a nationalized bank until she's 18, her grandparents will get Rs 20.9 lakh each as compensation.

Kavinaya's father Prathap Kumar (28) was working in Canada and had come to Chennai on a 10-day holiday. Though Kavinaya too was on the bike with her parents, safely seated on her mother's lap, she was thrown off the bike on impact of the crash in the posh Indira Nagar locality on November 20, 2009. Her parents died on the spot.

As a module leader in the Canada-based Kumaran Systems, Kumar was earning Rs 6.53 lakh per annum. His company too confirmed in court that he had been paying tax for the amount in Canada and that he would have reached the Rs 10 lakh salary mark had he been alive now. The girl's mother was 26 then and was working as a receptionist in a private company in the city.

On June 27, N Gunavathi, judge of the motor accidents claims tribunal here, awarded a total compensation of Rs 91.78 lakh taking into account the pitiable condition of the child and the ripe age of her grandparents. The judge also pointed out that there was no delay in the filing of the first information report, no contradiction between medical records and the FIR and the witness account too was coherent. The fact that the lorry driver was negligent and that he was driving the vehicle in a rash and negligent manner too has been proved through eyewitnesses, the judge said.