The Karnataka High Court has asked the family of an engineer, who allegedly died due to “electrocution” when he came into contact with a protective steel wire fence, put up around an electrical transformer near Church Street three years ago, to approach the civil court to seek damages.
Petitioners Ashwini Manoj Patil, wife of the victim, her two minor children, and in-laws had moved the High Court seeking Rs. 29.81 crore as compensation for the death of Manojkumar Vasanthrao Patil (37). They had alleged that the death was due to “negligence” of the Bangalore Electricity Supply Company Ltd. (Bescom).
Justice Raghvendra S. Chauhan, while declining to interfere, said that the plausible cause of Mr. Manoj’s death was riddled with doubts.
The doubts, the High Court said, could be cleared by the petitioners only by filing a civil suit for damage as the complicated issue of “the cause of his death’ could not be decided by the High Court in a writ jurisdiction but required examination of evidences through a trial before the civil court.
The incident occurred on May 5, 2013 when Manoj, who was the vice-president in Sundaram Auto Component, was walking along with a friend to reach the M. Chinnaswamy stadium to watch an IPL match. Since it had rained, a puddle of water had collected near the footpath. Mr. Patil, who tried to cross the puddle, lost his balance and to support himself had caught hold of the fence. He reportedly collapsed due to “electric shock due to leakage of electricity from transformer.”
In the initial post-mortem report the opinion on cause of death was reserved till the receipt of histopathological examination, which later indicated “possibility of electrocution can be considered”. Later the post-mortem report said that the “death was due to cardiac failure as a result of electrocution”.
However, Bescom had opposed the plea on the ground that the cause of death was “not clear” in the post-mortem report and the report of Electrical Inspectorate had found that there was no leakage of electricity from the transfer. Hence, the Bescom had said, the cause of death has to be ascertained through oral and documentary evidences before a civil court.
