MUMBAI: Fourteen years after a devastating accident left a school teacher with life-altering facial injuries, the Bombay High Court has enhanced the compensation awarded to her, observing that the disfigurement she suffered may have been one of the reasons her marriage ended in divorce.14 years after crash, HC raises compensation, says facial injuries may have led to woman’s divorceThe woman, then 29, was driving to the school where she taught near the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT) on the morning of August 8, 2012, at around 7.15am, when a speeding ambulance coming from the opposite direction made a sudden, rash U-turn and rammed into her car. The collision left her with severe facial injuries that altered the course of her life. While the Motor Accident Claims Tribunal (MACT) had awarded her ₹9.94 lakh as compensation in 2020, the Bombay High Court recently enhanced the amount to ₹11 lakh, observing that the divorce granted two years after the accident may have been a consequence of the injuries she sustained.In an order dated June 24, enhancing the compensation by ₹1.06 lakh, Justice Jitendra Jain observed, “The timing of divorce also indicates that the accident could be one of the reasons which resulted in divorce…” The single-judge bench directed Reliance General Insurance Company, the insurer of the ambulance, to pay the teacher, now 44, ₹11 lakh within four weeks. The judge said the woman’s pain and suffering could not be measured in monetary terms but, considering the nature of the injuries recorded by the MACT and “the consequence leading to the divorce”, enhanced the compensation awarded towards “pain, sufferings and inconvenience”.The High Court referred to the MACT’s findings, which recorded that the woman had suffered a serious degloving facial injury along with multiple fractures on the right side of her face. She underwent skin grafting and plastic surgery, and was left with a 35% disability. The injuries made it difficult for her to open her right eye and even consume food after the accident. The primary school teacher remained on leave for nearly five months, while the tribunal had also noted that she found it practically difficult to smile or yawn following the crash.The MACT also stated, “The claimant (woman) during that period must have lost her family life. Also due to facial injury she must have missed social and other family celebrations due to pain, inconvenience and most importantly to avoid any awkward situation due to her facial injury, she must have skipped her social life for a few months.” While the woman had maintained that her facial disfigurement had led to her divorce, the tribunal had declined to accept the contention. “Though the claimant alleged in her version that she suffered divorce because of her ugliness there is no evidence to that effect,” it had said. The High Court, however, took a different view. The woman and her husband were granted divorce by mutual consent on August 11, 2014. It observed that the timing of the divorce, which came two years after the accident, suggested that the crash had played a role in the breakdown of the marriage.Before the High Court, the insurance company challenged the MACT’s order, while the woman, through her lawyer Yashika Jain, sought enhancement of the compensation. The court dismissed the insurer’s plea that the woman had also contributed to the accident, noting that her car was stationary at a traffic signal and that it was the speeding ambulance’s rash U-turn on M G Road that caused the collision.The woman, meanwhile, argued that the ₹1.25 lakh awarded by the MACT towards pain and suffering was inadequate, contending that it was “because of the facial injury” that her husband “filed divorce proceedings resulting in a decree of divorce”.