K. Aravinda Kannan, a second-year engineering student, was a 10-month-old child when his mother died in an accident after saving his life in May 1998, and since then he had been waging a legal battle along with his uncle to get compensation for his mother’s death.
As the Madurai depot of the Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation (TNSTC) failed to pay the compensation even after the district court’s direction to pay Rs. 2.12 lakh in 2001, the court staff impounded a bus from Ramanathapuram bus stand on Thursday on court orders.
Acting on the execution petition filed by Kannan’s uncle A. Ganesan, a police constable, District Judge T. Pon Prakash passed orders for impounding a bus on July 29, after which senior bailiff J. Santhakumari impounded the bus plying on the Rameswaram-Madurai route, when it came to the bus stand here for a brief halt.
Mr. Ganesan had filed the execution petition in 2013, and the judge directed the TNSTC to immediately pay a compensation of Rs. 5.78 lakh with interest, but the corporation failed to comply with the order.
Mr. Ganesan said that his brother A. Kani Azhagar was riding a two-wheeler along with his wife Gowri and Kannan on May 19, 1998, when a broken-down bus, towed by a recovery vehicle, hit them at Usilampatti. Gowri threw the child off before she was run over by the bus.
The court had awarded a compensation of Rs. 19,200 for the injuries suffered by the child in 2001, but the corporation did not pay the amount till 2014 when the amount swelled to Rs. 51,500 with interest. Only after a bus was impounded last year, the corporation paid Rs. 40,000, Mr. Ganesan said.
After his brother too died of heart attack, he was educating Kannan and felt that the compensation would be of great relief to pay his college fees.
Last year, a bus was impounded as the corporation failed to pay compensation for the victim’s son for his injuries
