The High Court has directed the Registrar of Births and Deaths, Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike, to issue a death certificate to the 32-year-old widow of an excavator operator, who was washed away in rainwater while cleaning a Storm-Water Drain excavator during rains way back in 2017 and his body remained untraced till today.
Though the BBMP itself had paid ₹10 lakh as compensation to her for the death of her husband Shanthkumar S., the Registrar for Births and Deaths had rejected her application for the issuance of a death certificate.
Justice Suraj Govindaraj passed the order while allowing the petition filed by Saraswathi S.P. Her husband was working for the BBMP when he was washed away in rain while engaged in cleaning the drain on May 20, 2017.
The Application was rejected in 2018 for the reason that certificate from the medical practitioner in Form-4A on the cause of the death of her husband as per Rule 7 and 10 of the Karnataka Registration of Births and Deaths Rules, 1999, was not submitted along with the application.
“When there is no body which is available, the question of insisting for a certificate in terms of Form-4A would be completely illogical, the same can never be satisfied. Insistence on the same knowing fully well that it can never be satisfied has caused grave injustice to the petitioner (no pun intended),” the court observed.
The court said that necessary institutional mechanism could be put in place to have a check and balance system for the issuance of death certificate where a body is not found by obtaining approval of higher authorities and while granting such permission record the reasons for doing so.
The BBMP authorities cannot choose to keep quiet and do nothing and thereby deprive the petitioner of the death certificate as she would be deprived of various rights and she cannot take up activities that require the production of a death certificate.
On BBMP’s contention that the death certificate would become false if the petitioner’s husband returned alive at a later point, the court said this argument was put forward only to justify its action as the BBMP can always cancel the death certificate if the petitioner’s husband return alive.
The court directed the Registrar to issue death certificate within 30 days.
