LI Network
Published on: 8 September 2023 at 15:01 IST
The High Court of Karnataka has admonished the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) for its failure to issue a death certificate for an excavator operator who was swept away during heavy rains in 2017.
The court has ordered the municipal corporation to provide the certificate to the deceased’s family within 30 days.
The operator’s body was never recovered, and despite the BBMP compensating his wife, it refused to issue a death certificate, citing the requirement for a doctor’s certification of the cause of death.
Labeling the BBMP’s insistence on adhering to procedure as illogical, the High Court asserted that when a body is not available, demanding a certificate in Form 4A is entirely illogical and can never be fulfilled.
This insistence on a certificate, despite knowing it cannot be satisfied, has resulted in grave injustice to the petitioner, the court stated.
The petition was filed by Saraswathi S P, whose husband Shanthakumar S was 27 years old when he was swept away in heavy rains while working in a stormwater drain on May 20, 2017.
The BBMP had awarded her Rs. 10 lakh as compensation, and after investigating the incident, the Mahalakshmipuram police confirmed that Shanthakumar’s body was never found.
The BBMP issues death certificates using either Form 4 or 4A, as per the Karnataka Registration of Births and Deaths Rules. Form 4 is used for institutional deaths in hospitals, while for deaths outside hospitals, a doctor must certify the cause of death and other details under Form 4A.
The BBMP argued that since the body had not been recovered, issuing a death certificate would be erroneous if the husband were to return alive.
As the petitioner had not provided such a certificate, the BBMP claimed it was unable to issue one.
The recent judgment by the High Court dismissed this argument as baseless, stating that the corporation was clutching at straws to justify its inaction.
The court emphasized that even if the petitioner’s husband were to return alive, the BBMP could always cancel the death certificate. Depriving a living person of the benefits of a death certificate for a deceased individual due to such apprehensions is unwarranted.
The High Court also criticized the BBMP for the six-year delay in issuing the certificate. It noted that the petitioner had been denied a death certificate for her husband since 2017, causing significant hindrance as certificates for both birth and death have legal implications.
The court stressed that authorities should have considered the circumstances, where the body was washed away in a stormwater drain, and issued the death certificate without rigid adherence to procedure.
It stated that procedures should always serve the cause of justice, and in this case, injustice should not be caused due to an overemphasis on procedure.
The BBMP was instructed to provide the death certificate to the petitioner within 30 days.