Registered owner to pay damages

The Supreme Court ruled last week that a person whose name is found in the records of the motor vehicles registering authority is the owner of the vehicle for the purpose of fulfilling the obligation to pay compensation in case of a road accident. The owner might have changed, but the person on the record is liable to compensate. In this case, Naveen Kumar vs Vijay Kumar, the latter had sold his car in 2007 but did not change the name in the register. The car, meanwhile, had changed hands several times. It met with an accident at the hands of the fifth owner, and one person was killed. The motor accident compensation tribunal held the original owner liable for paying damages. But, the Punjab and Haryana high court reversed it. The Supreme Court set aside the high court ruling and asked the original owner to pay a compensation of ~400,000. The judgment asserted that the victim of the accident should not be left in a state of uncertainty. “A claimant for compensation ought not to be burdened with following a trail of successive transfers, which are not registered with the registering authority,” stated the judgment and pointed out that the object of the law was to provide relief to the victims of road accidents.