HC orders Rs 11.8 lakh compensation to boy who lost vital organs in ONGC pipeline blast

Chennai:

Madras High Court has ordered a compensation of Rs 11.8 lakh to be paid within four weeks to a student of a government higher secondary school in Pulivalam in Thiruvarur district after he lost his vital parts when a pumping machine installed by the Oil Natural and Gas Commission exploded.

Justice V Ramasubramanian ordered the state and ONGC to pay the amount for negligence after hearing a petition filed by D Narayanasamy whose son N jayaprakesh met with an accident at ONGC site while attending a NSS camp in Perungudi village on December 2008. He said a sum of Rs 3 lakh will be paid by the state government while Rs 8.8 lakh will be paid by ONGC to the boy.

Hitting out at ONGC for hiding the facts, the judge said that ONGC has attempted to hide a pumpkin in a handful of rice. ONGC contends that the accident did not occur at their premises, but had occurred at a place 70 meters away from the premises. But, the admitted averments on the part of district collector district educational officer, school headmaster and the hospital records clearly show that the accident happened at the site of ONGC’s pumping machine.

Ruling out negligence on the part of the boy, the judge slammed the school officials for failing to take due and appropriate care of the minor child in their custody. “When children are taken out of the school premises, especially to a remote place, the School Authorities are expected to exercise a much higher degree of care and caution than they are normally expected to exercise within the school campus. By allowing or at least by their failure to notice that a few children had gone out of the camp site to ease in a public place, the Educational Authorities have become guilty of negligence, the judge observed.

The judge also charged ONGC with negligence and said that that the pumping machine was in operation without any watch and ward staff of ONGC monitoring site. There was no compound  or fencing around the pumping machine besides there were not even sign boards or warning notices erected near the pumping machine to caution people from going near the machine.

“Both ONGC and the educational authorities are guilty. The educational authorities are guilty of not ensuring that the children did not go out of the camp site and not keeping a watch on the children, who went out. ONGC is guilty of allowing a dangerous machine to be in operation without any fencing or warning sign boards and without any watch and ward staff,” the judge observed.

The judge also said that ONGC should take this also as part of Corporate Social Responsibility initiative and not make an attempt to shift the blame on the State Government exclusively.

But the court also struck down the contention of the petitioner that his  son is entitled to additional compensation in terms of the provisions of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. “I do not think that the Act is of application to cases of this nature,” he said.