Bombay HC: Insurer Liable for Welder's Death in Tanker Blast at Garage, Dismisses "Not in Use" Defence
Justice Jitendra Jain holds that a motor vehicle undergoing repairs is still "in use" under Section 147 of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988, and that a private garage accessible to the public qualifies as a "public place" under Section 2(34), making the insurer liable for compensation.
The Bombay High Court has dismissed a challenge by The New India Assurance Co. Ltd. to a Motor Accident Claims Tribunal award of Rs. 8,26,000/- with interest, arising from the death of a welder who was killed in a blast while carrying out welding work on a motor tanker at a Mumbai garage. Justice Jitendra Jain, sitting singly, ruled on 28 July 2026 that the tanker being repaired at the garage was still a vehicle “in use” for the purposes of Section 147 of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988, and that the garage constituted a “public place” under Section 2(34) of the Act. The judgment resolves three statutory questions that the insurer had raised to escape liability and, in doing so, aligns with a line of precedent from the Supreme Court and multiple High Courts that reads the Act's compensation provisions broadly in favour of accident victims.
The Accident and the Tribunal's Award
On 19 May 2015, a motor tanker was brought to Om Sai Servicing Garage, Chembur, Mumbai, for repairs. Shafiq Atikurrahaman, a welder employed at the garage, was carrying out welding work on the tanker when a sudden blast occurred. The cause was attributed to residual gas or fuel remaining inside the tank that had not been removed before the welding began. Shafiq died as a result. An FIR was lodged against the owner of the garage by a relative of the deceased.
The dependents of the deceased — his father Atikurrahaman Lais Mohammad and mother Mrs. Aasama Atikurrahaman — filed a claim petition before the Motor Accident Claims Tribunal, Mumbai. The Tribunal, by its order dated 3 August 2020, awarded Rs. 8,26,000/- along with interest against the owner of the vehicle and the insurance company jointly. The vehicle owner did not appear before the Tribunal. The insurance company, aggrieved, filed First Appeal No. 246 of 2021 before the Bombay High Court.
The Insurance Company's Arguments
Mr. Devendranath S. Joshi, appearing for New India Assurance, advanced three interlocking arguments to resist liability. First, he submitted that because the tanker was stationed at the garage for repairs, it was not in “use” at the time of the incident and therefore Section 147 of the Motor Vehicles Act, which attaches liability to use of a vehicle in a public place, could not be invoked against the insurer.
Second, he contended that a “private garage” falls outside the definition of “public place” under Section 2(34) of the Act, since the public does not have an unrestricted right of access to it. Without a public place, he argued, the preconditions for third-party insurance liability under Section 147 were absent.
Third, Mr. Joshi urged that both the deceased welder and the garage owner were negligent — the FIR was filed only against the garage owner — and therefore the insurance company could not be made liable. He also submitted that under Section 166 of the Act, the deceased's own negligence disentitled the claimants from maintaining the petition. He relied on the Supreme Court decisions in Minu B. Mehta & Anr. v. Balkrishna Ramchandra Nayan & Anr. (1977) 2 SCC 441 and Surender Kumar Arora & Anr. v. Manoj Bisla & Ors. (2012) 4 SCC 552.
Ms. Varsha Chavan, for the original claimants, countered that a garage is a public place for purposes of the Act, that a vehicle being repaired is a vehicle in use, and that the insurer becomes liable whenever a third party dies or suffers injury arising from such use. She relied on the Supreme Court's ruling in Shivaji Dayanu Patil & Anr. vs. Vatschala Uttam More (1991) 3 SCC 530, the Bombay High Court Full Bench in Pandurung Chimaji Agale & Anr. vs. New India Life Insurance Co. Ltd. & Ors. (1988 SCC OnLine Bom 29), and Guru Govekar V. Filomena f. Lobo & Ors. (1988) 3 SCC 1.
Whether a Vehicle Under Repair Is "In Use" — Issue (i)
Justice Jain began with the statutory text. Section 147(1) requires an insurance policy to cover liability arising from death or bodily injury to any person “caused by or arising out of the use of the motor vehicle in a public place.” The Explanation to that provision extends coverage even to a person who is not in a public place at the time of the accident, if the act or omission causing the accident occurred in a public place.
The court held that the phrase “use of the motor vehicle” cannot be given a restrictive meaning confined to a moving vehicle. A vehicle travelling from point A to point B and stopping at a food mall remains in use while parked; equally, a vehicle diverted to a garage for a tyre change or to remove a puncture is in use when the tyre is being replaced. Repairs, the court reasoned, are an integral aspect of a vehicle's movement from one place to another. Taking a vehicle to a workshop is therefore part of that continuous use.
The court also drew support from Section 190 of the Act, which makes it an offence to drive a vehicle in a defective condition in any public place. The owner of the tanker, knowing the tank had a defect, was obliged to get it repaired before driving it on a road. Taking the vehicle to a garage to remove that defect was, in the court's view, the discharge of a statutory duty under Section 190 — and could not simultaneously be characterised as taking the vehicle out of “use.” The court also noted Sections 122, 126, and 132 of the Act, which regulate stationary vehicles, as legislative confirmation that even a vehicle at rest falls within the Act's scheme.
Justice Jain followed the Goa Bench of the Bombay High Court in Cholamandalam MS General Insurance Co. Ltd. v. Priyanka K. Mayekar and others (2022 SCC OnLine Bom 3789), a factually identical case where a welder died after an explosion in a Tata Mobile vehicle's tank at a garage. The Goa Bench had in turn applied the Supreme Court's ruling in Shivaji Dayanu Patil, which held that the word “use” covers both moving and stationary vehicles and does not cease merely because the vehicle has been rendered immobile by breakdown or accident.
The insurer's reliance on Minu B. Mehta and Surender Kumar Arora was rejected as contrary to the consistent line of authority following Shivaji Dayanu Patil.
Whether a Garage Is a "Public Place" — Issue (ii)
Section 2(34) of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 defines “public place” as “a road, street, way or other place whether a thoroughfare or not, to which the public have a right of access” and includes stands at which passengers are picked up or set down by a stage carriage. Justice Jain confined his analysis to the first limb of this definition.
The insurer argued that all members of the public must have a right of access to a place before it qualifies. The court rejected this. The word “public” in the definition, it held, refers to a defined group of people — in this context, vehicle owners and those who approach the garage for repairs or accessories. No material was placed before the court to show that there was any prohibition on any person from accessing the garage. Private ownership of a property does not, by itself, exclude members of the public from accessing it.
The court drew attention to the definition's own qualifier: “thoroughfare or not.” A thoroughfare connects one area to another and is inherently public. The definition expressly includes places that are not thoroughfares, which, the court reasoned, plainly extends to private premises with public access. On this reading, even a place with restricted, permissive, or fee-based access would qualify as a public place under Section 2(34).
The court again followed Cholamandalam MS General Insurance Co. Ltd. (Goa Bench), which had conducted an extensive survey of authority on this point. That survey included the Bombay High Court Full Bench in Pandurung Chimaji Agale, which held that all places where members of the public have access, whether as of right or in a controlled manner, are covered by the definition; decisions of the Andhra Pradesh, Madras, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Karnataka, and Uttaranchal High Courts to the same effect; and a second Full Bench of the Bombay High Court in Forbes Forbes Campbell And Co. Ltd. v. Vilasrao Deshmukh, which applied the same principle to the Bombay Dock Area.
The Andhra Pradesh High Court in Manepalli Ammalu and Another v. Kada Hareesh Kumar and others (2025 SCC OnLine AP 2430) was also cited, and its finding that a garage constitutes a “public place” under the Act was approved.
Negligence and Third-Party Status — Issue (iii)
The insurer's third argument was that the deceased was himself negligent, and that since the FIR was registered only against the garage owner (and not the vehicle owner), the insurance company could not be held liable.
Justice Jain rejected the negligence argument on the facts found by the Tribunal, noting that no fault could be attributed to the deceased welder. The court observed that the blast was caused by residual gas in the tanker's tank — the consequence of the owner bringing a defective vehicle for repair without ensuring the tank was cleared. The duty to ensure the tank was safe before welding rested with the vehicle's owner, not the welder carrying out the repair.
On the question of the FIR being registered only against the garage owner, the court held that this circumstance was irrelevant to the insurer's liability. The deceased was a third party for purposes of the insurance policy — he was neither the owner of the insured vehicle nor the insurer. The court followed the Goa Bench's reasoning in Cholamandalam MS General Insurance Co. Ltd. that the expression “third party” covers every person other than the contracting parties to the insurance policy, and that narrowing this concept would defeat the mandatory third-party insurance requirement under the Act.
The court also drew on the Supreme Court's observation in Guru Govekar: when an owner entrusts a vehicle to a repairer for repairs, the owner implicitly allows the repairer and the repairer's employees to use the vehicle for repair purposes, and if a third party dies or suffers injury as a result of negligence in that process at a public place, the insurer becomes liable to pay compensation under the Act.
The Karnataka High Court in Oriental Insurance Company Limited vs. Mrs. Parvathi (First Appeal No. 2676 of 2016, decided 3 July 2025) and the Uttaranchal High Court in Oriental Insurance Co. Ltd. vs. Banu Begum & Anr. (2005 SCC OnLine Utt 47) — both involving explosions in tankers parked for welding — were referred to as further authority rejecting arguments identical to those raised by the insurer in the present case.
Order
Justice Jitendra Jain dismissed First Appeal No. 246 of 2021 filed by The New India Assurance Co. Ltd. The Interim Application No. 1407 of 2021 filed by the insurer did not survive and was disposed of accordingly. Interim Application No. 211 of 2023 filed by the claimants was similarly disposed of.
The statutory deposit of Rs. 25,000/- along with interest was directed to be transferred to the concerned Tribunal. The parties were given liberty to apply for a refund of the same. The claimants were held entitled to the decretal amount of Rs. 8,26,000/- along with interest as awarded by the Tribunal.