HC directs son to pay late father's unpaid compensation to

The Madras High Court has observed that when a father's assets are passed on to his son after his death, so are his liabilities.
Making the observation, Justice S Vaidayanathan directed a man to pay the compensation that ought to have been disbursed by his late father to the family of a worker killed while he was engaged in drainage cleaning.
The matter relates to the payment of compensation to the family of the deceased who was engaged for cleaning the drainage in the house where the petitioner's father lived.
The petitioner, A Ravichandran, had challenged a Chennai corporation zonal officer's order directing him to pay Rs 10 lakh as liability to Adhilakshmi, legal heir of Narasimhan, who died on August 26, 2001.

"The concept of pious (moral) obligation originated in Dharmasastras," the judge said in the recent verdict.
"Just as Lord Rama was obligated to fulfil his deceased father's promise to his step-mother, the petitioner herein is obligated to pay compensation to the deceased worker's family, which is imposed on his father," he said.

According to the petitioner, the compensation had already been paid by his father to Narasimhan's family.
Narasimhan's widow had kept quiet for more than 15 years and only in 2016, "the corporation is claiming the compensation amount on her behalf and it is only an afterthought", the petitioner said and sought that the order be quashed.

Declining to accept the contention, the judge said the petitioner and the official were jointly and "vicariously responsible to pay compensation to the dependant of the deceased, this court interferes with the order and modifies the same to the extent that Rs 7,50,000 will have to be paid to the victims family."
Out of this, Rs 5 lakh should be paid by the petitioner and the remaining Rs 2.5 lakh by the corporation, the judge said.
"However, this will not preclude Adhilakshmi and other legal heirs to claim the balance amount of Rs 2.5 lakh, if they are able to establish that there is no delay on their part in claiming the amount," the court said.

The court further made it clear that the compensation must be remitted to the accounts of the legal heirs of the deceased within two months electronically.