The Mumbai consumer body criticised an insurance firm for rejecting a woman's claim arbitrarily and failing to fulfil its role imposed by state government.
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The District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission in South Mumbai has ruled in favour of a farmer's widow, instructing an insurance firm to respect her Rs 2 lakh claim under a plan launched by the Maharashtra government following her husband's death in a traffic accident in 2017.
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In a ruling published on April 18, the consumer body in Mumbai criticised the insurance firm for rejecting the woman's lawful claim in an "arbitrary" way, claiming that it had failed to fulfil its role imposed by the state government, the PTI reported.
Per the report, the complaint submitted by the farmer's widow in Solapar stated that her husband was killed in a traffic accident on November 25, 2017, while returning home from a local vegetable market. Despite being sent to a local hospital, he succumbed to his injuries.
The widow filed a claim for compensation after learning about the Maharashtra government's 'Gopinath Munde Farmers Accidental Insurance Scheme'. However, the insurance firm selected by the state government declined her claim because the deceased farmer was over 75 years old and so qualified for compensation, the report added.
The news agency report further stated that after evaluating the records and data given by both parties, the commission discovered anomalies in the insurance company's case. While the police FIR and postmortem report revealed that the deceased was roughly 70 years old, the insurance company provided no conclusive proof to back its allegation that he was over 75 years old.
Furthermore, the commission emphasised that the late submission of documents did not justify the insurance company's rejection of the claim, as the government announcement allowed claims to be accepted after the 90-day period if valid grounds were supplied, PTI reported.
Consequently, the commission declared the insurance company's repudiation of the claim as "arbitrary and bad in law," ordering it to pay the widow Rs 2 lakh with penal interest of 6 per cent per year from the date of repudiation, along with compensation of Rs 20,000 for mental agony and Rs 5,000 for litigation expenses, the PTI report added.
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