JUDGMENT :

The appeal is by the Insurance Company alleging that the injured-deceased in the subject accident, was a gratuitous passenger and there could be no liability cast on the insurance company on the strength of the policy covering the vehicle MH-11-F 4369. An incident occurred where a driver, who was a passenger in the offending vehicle, fell off the moving lorry and succumbed to the injuries occasioned. The specific case of the claimants was that the deceased was employed in one lorry among the two travelling together from Kerala to Maharashtra and while he was travelling in the other lorry he slipped down and was run over by the same vehicle. The application was one under Section 163A of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 and there is no question to be decided of negligence. The learned counsel appearing for the respondents/claimants argued before me that both the vehicles were owned by one person and even when the deceased was travelling in the other vehicle, he was the employee of the registered owner and was travelling as a spare driver; covered under the Proviso to Section 147.

2. One Milind S/o. Bhanudas, narrates the incident in the First Information Statement (FIS). There w