The Supreme Court enhanced compensation for a six-month-old accident victim left permanently paraplegic from ₹45,40,800 to ₹83,38,360 with 9% interest, holding her functional disability was total despite a 90% physical disability rating, and applying the multiplier of 18 along with realistic attendant-charge and pain-and-suffering awards.
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Moral Universe
The mother frames this as a case where an innocent infant paid an unbearable price for someone else's rash driving, and where the legal system's compensation calculations fail to grasp the true, lifelong magnitude of that loss.
Emotional Driver
A parent's anguish and protective urgency — the drive to secure whatever resources are possible to care for a child who will need lifelong medical treatment, attendants, and support.
Objective
To obtain compensation that genuinely reflects the catastrophic and permanent nature of her daughter's disability and the lifetime of care, treatment, and lost opportunity that lies ahead.
Blind Spots
The narrative understandably centers on the family's suffering and need, without engaging with the technical distinctions (multiplier tables, notional income formulas, physical versus functional disability) that ultimately determine how compensation is calculated under the law.
Inherent Tensions
- —The family's sense that no amount of money can restore what was lost sits against a legal system that must nonetheless reduce that loss to a calculated rupee figure.
- —The child was not earning any income at the time of the accident, yet the law must still estimate what she would have earned as an adult in order to compensate for that loss.
- —Successive tribunals and courts arrived at three different figures for the same injuries, reflecting how much judicial discretion and methodology can affect the final award.