KOLKATA: A dying that resulted from a mosquito chunk in hospital could not be referred to as an “accident” in India that will be eligible for an accident insurance coverage declare, the Calcutta Excessive Court docket dominated on Wednesday.
The court docket turned down a girl’s plea for the dying of her son – from dengue developed after a mosquito chunk, aside from different problems – to be handled as an accident as a result of it was “least anticipated” within the sanitised environs of a hospital.
Justice Moushumi Bhattacharya was listening to an enchantment filed by Chitra Mukherjee, whose son Chayan – an Military man – died of dengue whereas being handled for problems, together with kidney illness, after knee surgical procedure on the Command Hospital in Alipore in December 2021. Eight days earlier than his dying, he had developed dengue, with the dying certificates mentioning each dengue and end-stage renal illness as reason for dying.
Chitra filed an accident insurance coverage with the United India Insurance coverage Firm however obtained turned down in September the next yr on the bottom that the reason for dying was non-accidental. This had prompted her to maneuver court docket. Chitra had argued that the mosquito chunk must be handled as an accident because it occurred in a hospital, the place it was surprising. She had additionally mentioned that insurance coverage insurance policies of Military personnel must be handled in another way from that of civilians.
Justice Bhattacharya mentioned the insurance coverage firm’s refusal couldn’t be seen as “arbitrary or unreasonable”, as neither the phrases of the insurance coverage coverage, nor authorized precedents “allow decoding any illness brought on by a mosquito chunk as an accident.”
Justice Moushumi Bhattacharya on Wednesday mentioned a mosquito chunk in a hospital couldn’t be referred to as an accident. She was listening to a plea by Chitra Mukherjee, whose son Chayan, an Military man, had died in December 2021 whereas being handled on the Command Hospital in Alipore for post-surgery problems. Eight days previous to his dying, Chayan had developed dengue after a mosquito bit him on the hospital.
“Struggling a mosquito chunk within the sanitised confines of a hospital could also be an undesirable and unwarranted incident at finest; it’s not one thing which is fortuitous, corresponding to to startle the sufferer (the ‘bitten’) as being surprising,” the choose mentioned. She additionally referred to a 2019 Supreme Court docket judgment in a near-similar situation. In that occasion, a bench of justices D Y Chandrachud and Hemant Gupta had turned down a Nationwide Shopper Disputes Redressal Fee order which had interpreted a mosquito chunk to be an accident. In that case, an individual based mostly in Barasat, who used to work as a tea backyard supervisor in Mozambique, had died in November 2012 from malaria. The insurance coverage firm had turned down his household’s claims.
In that occasion, the Supreme Court docket had talked about the frequency of malaria in Mozambique, which accounts for five% of malaria instances globally, and the place one in three folks get the illness.
“In gentle of those statistics, the sickness of encephalitis malaria by a mosquito chunk can’t be thought-about as an accident. It was neither surprising nor unexpected,” the bench had noticed.
Justice Bhattacharya referred to this judgment and concluded {that a} mosquito chunk couldn’t be thought-about an accident in India. “It can’t be mentioned that mosquito bites and ensuing illnesses are unexpected occasions… to a resident of Kolkata,” she mentioned.
The court docket talked about the details have been “a tragic reflection” of preventives utilized by a hospital to repel vector-borne illnesses, however added that it couldn’t be mentioned that discovering mosquitoes, even in probably the most sanitised of interiors, was “a startling exception and never the rule.”
