The high costs of court fees and reluctance among lawyers are deterring the families of road accident victims from pursuing compensation over the deaths of their loved ones, even though the legal instruments exist. All victims of road accidents are entitled to file a lawsuit seeking compensation as well as punishment for the people responsible. However, instances of the main culprits in road accidents being punished are very rare. In some cases, allegations over road accidents are settled through arbitration between the victim’s family and the accused.
The issue entered the limelight on Sunday after the High Court ordered Tk4.62 crore in damages to be paid to the family of acclaimed filmmaker Tareque Masud, who was killed when a bus collided with his vehicle in 2011. According to the verdict, Tareque Masud’s family is due to be paid Tk30 lakh by the driver of the bus, Jamir Hossain, and Tk80,000 by the insurance company Reliance, as well as Tk4.31 crore by bus owners Kashed Miah, Khokon Miah and Jahangir Kabir Tunin.
A lawyer named Khalilur Rahman explained to the Bangla Tribune that two lawsuits can be filed in such cases: one demanding punishment for the death; and the other for compensation, in which case the age, profession, and actual and potential lost income of the deceased are taken into consideration. This accounts for the large award given to Tareque Masud’s family.
“Filing a compensation case in Bangladesh is almost unconventional,” Khalilur Rahman said. “The cases are actually registered under the law of tort (which) determines the role of the people responsible for a certain incident.
“If a driver makes any mistake, his employer has to shoulder the responsibility because the owner might not have warned him. It is possible to realise compensation for road crashes through such cases, but that does not help very often because of lethargy by lawyers,” the lawyer said.
Court fees increase the amount of the compensation awarded, as stipulated in the relevant section of Tort Law. The fees are generally too high for those in poverty to handle the financial burden of pursuing a case.
“This a major reason most people opt not to file a compensation case,” Khalilur said. “The cases are time-consuming as well (and) nobody knows exactly when a complainant will get compensation even after a case is settled.”
Khalilur Rahman knows this only too well. He acted as the legal counsel for Rowshan Aara, whose husband, the Daily Sangbad News Editor Mozammel Hossain Montu, was killed after being hit by a vehicle belonging to Bangladesh Beverage Industries Ltd in Motijheel, Dhaka, in 1989.
Rowshan sued the beverage company for compensation two in 1991 but it was not until July 2014 – a quarter of a century after she was widowed – that the Appellate Division upheld a lower court verdict ordering Tk3.52 crore to be paid in compensation. However, Rowshan has still not received a penny over her husband’s death.
“My elder son was nine and the youngest just five at that time. We lost everything pursuing the case. We just got nothing”, she said
Khalilur Rahman termed the compensation case “the maiden one of its kind in Bangladesh”. “We got justice, but the perpetrators are not paying us,” he said. “We have filed another lawsuit to implement the verdict and force them to pay us the compensation they owe, but in vain,” Khalilur said the court finally ordered the beverage company to pay the compensation by auctioning off its property at Tejgaon. “But the process to sell the property is not progressing,” the lawyer said.
