‘Pay insured even if death not a mishap’

Mumbai: A consumer forum has brought to book an insurance company that denied the accidental death claim of a south Mumbai resident on the grounds that the death of his father due to a fall at home was not accidental and was caused by disease-related giddiness.      The firm was told to pay the victim's son the insured sum of Rs 5 lakh with an interest of Rs 1.20 lakh and Rs 23,000 towards litigation costs. The forum cited a national commission order which said it would be an accidental death even if an insured suffered a fit and drowned or fell in front of a train and died. P 6 Big aid for crash victims starts Mon Dipak Kumar Dash TNN  New Delhi: The country's first cashless treatment of road accident victims, which ensures free treatment in the first 48 hours, will be launched next Monday with the 200-km stretch from Gurgaon's 32-lane toll plaza to Jaipur bypass of NH-8 to be the pilot corridor.      A trial run has been conducted on this stretch for the past three weeks involving over 70 volunteers trained by AIIMS as first responders. The programme, to be launched by the road transport and highways ministry, aims to shift crash victims within 20 minutes to a nearby hospital. Sources said more than 50 hospitals have been networked to admit injured people immediately and provide treatment.      According to various studies, the survival chances of crash victims go up by 50% if they are provided treatment within an hour. Over 1.4 lakh people were killed in road accidents in India in 2012.      As part of the cashless scheme, medical expenses of the first two days will be borne by the government. This will ensure quick and hassle-free treatment of theinjured. However, there is a maximum cap of Rs 30,000 for free treatment.      "We want to roll out the cashless treatment plan for the entire country. Insurance companies will be interested in this since their outgo on account of third party claims will reduce if we are able to check the total number of fatalities," road transport minister Oscar Fernandes said.      The recent global report on road safety by WHO claimed that the number of seriously injured being rushed to hospital was as less as 11 in every hundred in India.      Ten advance life-support ambulances have been deployed on the pilot stretch. "These would be stationed at an approximate distance of 20 km from each other, thus serving 10 km on either side. The average response time will not be more than 20 minutes," said Birendra Mohanty, vicepresident of Financial Inclusion Solution Group at ICICI Lombard.      Officials said a toll free number (1033) to call an ambulance or report an accident had been activated and a call centre was engaged to take care of all such emergency calls.