Deepak Gupta, J. - Neelam Anand, the appellant, was a happily married woman. She had a husband and two sons. She worked as a Special Assistant in Canara Bank at Ambala Cantt. On 17.4,1999 she along with her husband was travelling from Delhi to Solan in a vehicle bearing No. HR-01F-3692. Then tragedy struck. Near Shahbad there was a collision between this vehicle and another vehicle bearing No. PB-08Q-7535. Neelam Anand lost her husband K.K. Anand in the said accident and she herself was seriously injured.

2. The appellant suffered injury in the spine as a result of which her whole body below the neck became totally paralysed. She is confined to a wheel chair. She has no sensation in the lower part of the body. She needs assistance and constant attendance. She cannot perform her daily ablutions without the assistance of other person. She cannot stand. She cannot move. She cannot write. She can only thumb mark documents, that too with the help of somebody who lifts her hand to put move her thumb. She is, however, mentally totally alert. She understands everything. Above the neck, she is all there. Her fate is worse than that of the dead.

3. She filed a petition for grant of co