The injury was deemed an accident within the meaning of the Workmen's Compensation Act, 1906, and arose in the course of and out of Varkey's employment.

1. The 1st respondent's son Varkey was a workman under the appellant. On May 3,1971 he died of stab injuries he received at the gate of the appellant's saw-mill where he was employed to do odd jobs. That day there was some labour unrest in the mill. Some of Varkey's work-fellows refusing to work had assembled at the gate from the morning. They were shouting slogans and the situation was tense. Varkey was sent out to a nearby tea shop in the first instance to fetch two glasses of tea for Anto and Vakkachan, the son and the nephew of the appellant, who were inside the mill and a second time to return the tea glasses. While he was coming back from the tea shop after returning the glasses Anto was on his way towards the road on a motor cycle. The motor cycle dashed against one of the workmen assembled at the gate, one Pappan. He fell down. Varkey was at the gate, when Pappan fell down and was helping Pappan to rise up when Vakkachan's stab fell on Varkey. Vakkachan had by this time come to the gate where upon a scuffle ensued between him on the one side and the striking workmen on the other.

2. It is contended that the injury being an intentional injury the same cannot be said to have been caused by an accident. It is by now well settled that the term 'accident' for the purpose of the law relating to compensation for personal injuries' sustained by workmen and the employer's liability in that behalf, includes any injury which is not designed by the workman himself, and it is of no consequence that the injury was designed and intended by the person inflicting the same. In Nisbet v. Rayne & Burn (19102 K.B. 689) where a cashier travelling in a train with a large sum of money intended for payment to his employer's workmen was robbed and murdered, the Court of Appeal held the murder was an accident from the point of cashier and therefore it was an accident within the meaning of that term in the Workmen's Compensation Act, 1906. Similarly in Trim Joint District School Board of Management v. Kelly (1914 A.C. 667) where an assistant master at an industrial school was assaulted and killed by two of the pupils while the assistant master was performing his duties, the House of Lords held that his death was caused by an accident for the purpose of the same statute. Viscount Haldane L. C. pointed out that the meaning of the term'accident' would vary according as the context varies, and as instances mentioned criminal jurisprudence where crime and accident are sharply divided by the presence or absence of mens rea and the law of marine insurance where the maxim: Injure non remota causa sed proximo spectator (In law the proximate, and not the remote, cause is to be regarded) applies. The learned Lord Chancellor said:

"My Lords, if we had to consider the principle of the Workmen's Compensation Act as res integra, I should be of opinion that the principle was one more a kin to insurance at the expense of the employer of the workman against accidents arising put and in the course of his employment than to the imposition on the employer of liability for anything for which he might reasonably be made answerable on the ground that he ought to have foreseen and prevented it. I think that the fundamental conception is that of insurance in the true sense. And if so it appears to me to follow that in giving a meaning to "accident" in its content in such a scheme one would look naturally to the proxima causa, of which Lord Herschell and Lord Barmwell spoke in connection with marine insurance, the kind of event which is unlocked for and sudden, and causes personal injury, and is limited only by this, that it must arise out of and in the course of the employment. Behind this event it appears to us that the purpose of the statute renders it irrelevant to search for explanations or remoter causes, provided the circumstances bring it within the definition. No doubt the analogy of the insurance cases must not, as Lord Lindley points out in his judgmen