Insurance company asked to pay Rs 5 lakh to woman bus owner

An insurance company has been directed by a consumer forum here to pay Rs five lakh in settlement to a woman whose bus had caught fire in 2011, while rejecting the firm's claim that her document was forged.
The Central Delhi District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum held that National Insurance Company Ltd was deficient in service as it failed to produce before it the document which the firm had claimed to be forged.
"The insurance company has not placed on the file the original reply of the complainant received by it or by the surveyor which did not contain the hand written underlined writing of the complainant.

"Therefore, we find that the complainant after taking print out of her reply to the email, she put handwritten conditional consent on the reply and sent it. It was duly received by the insurance company/its surveyor on January 11, 2012. Hence, we do not find that the complainant made any interpolation or forgery in the reply...," a bench headed by its President B B Chaudhary said.
The forum also asked the firm to pay Rs 10,000 as cost of litigation to the woman.
The forum passed the order on a complaint of Balbir Kaur, a resident of Shivaji Enclave here, in which she had said that her bus had suddenly caught fire on the intervening night of August 1-2, 2011 due to short circuit. The bus was insured with the National Insurance Company.

She said the insurance company had offered to settle the claim by giving Rs 4.9 lakh which was accepted by her but the company had failed to make the payment.
The woman thereafter approached the forum seeking a claim of Rs 12 lakh from the firm and also the cost of litigation.