PUSHPAM Vs. MANAGER, BENAMI ESTATE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is an appeal under Section 30(a) of the Workmen's Compensation Act from an order of the Workmen's Compensation Commissioner, dismissing Workmen's Compensation Case No. 72 of 1981, which the Appellant had filed claiming an amount of Rs. 25,200 as compensation. In her application, the Appellant stated that she sustained an injury on 13th of July, 1981, during the course of her employment at about 7.55 a.m. while she was proceeding for work in the Estate Nursery. She stated that her salary was Rs. 318 per month. The application was dated 24th January 1981. The applicant is admittedly an illiterate. Along with the application, she had filed an authorisation authorising the General Secretary of High Range Estate Thozhilali Union to conduct the case on her behalf. The sworn statement was taken from her on 20th October 1981, in which she stated that she was involved in an accident at about 7.45 a.m. on 13th January 1981 while she was proceeding for work in the nursery, that she fell down while she was passing on her way to work, that her right leg was fractured and that she was taken to the Estate Hospital, and thereafter to a Private Nursing Home at Mundakayam. She was treated in that Hospital for about six months. She could not work thereafter. Her claim for compensation was not heeded to by the Management and therefore she was constrained to file the petition.

(2.) IN the written objections, the Management denied the accident on 13th July 1981. It was stated that the Management was not informed of any such accident, that she was not involved in any accident in the course of her employment and that the necessary particulars viz., time, place and manner of the alleged accident were not disclosed in the application. The applicant filed a replication reiterating that the accident occurred on her way to work and that the time of the accident was about 8.00 a.m. on 13th January 1981. She also reiterated in her statement that the employer arranged for first -aid in the Estate Hospital and thereafter removed her to a Private Nursing Home and that all the expenses for her treatment were met by the Management.

(3.) THE employer, thereafter, examined two workmen and the Manager of the Estate as also an Assistant Professor of the Medical College, Kottayam, who had issued Ext. A -1 certificate to the applicant. The attempt of the employer was to make out that the applicant need not have started for work at 7.30 a.m. because work in the nursery commences only at 8.00 am and that the applicant sustained the injury not while proceeding to work but while attending to her private affairs near the river away from the nursery. It is significant to mention, that no attempt was made during the course of the examination of these witnesses even to suggest the date of the accident and whether it was 13th January 1981 or 13th July 1981. Both of them asserted that the applicant was not taken to the Estate Hospital, nor was she removed to the Private Hospital in Mundakkayam. They also pleaded ignorance of her treatment for a period of six months as claimed by her.