Bengaluru: Highlighting the delay accident victims face in receiving compensation from the legal systems, health minister Dinesh Gundu Rao said Thursday that a total payout of up to Rs 80,000 crore was pending in the country across 10 lakh cases as of 2023-24.He added that the interim compensation being provided to accident victims, which is Rs 25,000 as of now, should be increased up to Rs 3-4 lakh.“Few people truly follow the concept of ‘neuro justice’— justice for road accident victims and the challenges they face in securing compensation through our legal framework. Those who endure the process gain a deeper understanding of the profound difficulties in achieving true justice and fair compensation amounts. Families, especially from lower middle-class or poor backgrounds, face double trauma: loss and the struggle for redressal, often giving up due to lack of awareness or ability to navigate the process,” the minister said at the launch of the Neuro Justice Trilogy and the Neuro Justice Framework Handbook, authored by functional neurosurgeon Dr Sharan Srinivasan and neurorehabilitation expert Dr Prathiba Sharan in Nimhans.The Neuro Justice Framework 1.0 is an operational model for assessing functional disability in legal contexts, currently patent-pending. Seemanth Kumar Singh, commissioner of police, Bengaluru, who also spoke at the event, said that accidents can be prevented by changing people’s perspectives. He also said more trauma centres should be built near highways, so that the “golden hour” can be utilised successfully instead of rushing victims to the city hospitals, which tend to take extra time.Supreme Court judge Justice Aravind Kumar spoke about how the system should be fair while assessing the disability of the person to make sure justice is served.
