UNITED INDIA INSURANCE COMPANY LIMITED Vs. PARLAD RAI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The Insurance Company is in appeal on the issue of quantum on the ground that the claim by the parents-in-law for of the death of daughter-in-law is not maintainable. The claimants' son had also died in the accident which had been subject of an independent claim.

(2.) The contention of the learned counsel for the petitioner is that the parents-in-law could not be said to be dependents on the deceased and, therefore, the petition itself is not maintainable. It must be noticed that under Section 15 of the Hindu Succession Act, in the absence of children and husband, on the death of a female, heirs of thehusband shall be the legal heirs. The father and mother are the heirs of the husband and, therefore, they shall be taken as legal heirs. The maintainability of the petition cannot therefore be doubted.

(3.) The extent of dependence may probably vary and it may not normally happen that the parents-in-law could be stated to be dependents on the daughter-in- law. However, it ought to make a difference in a case where the son of the claimants has also died. In an ordinary Indian social setting, a daughter-in- law moves into the family of her husband and takes care of the household. In this case, the deceased was a householder. We have come by a gradual acknowledgment of gender equality as a constitutional scheme and the increasing recognition of the value of contribution of womanhood to the sum of economic prosperity and social felicity. Housewives have obtained a new moniker as homemakers. In Arun Kumar Agarwal and another v. National Insurance Company and others, 2010 3 RCR(Civ) 827decided on 26th July, 2010 in Civil Appeal No. 5843 of 2010, the Supreme Court was dealing with the case of death of a woman in a road accident and sounded on the global approaches in the matter of an assessment of contribution of a householder to the family.