Hisar couple fought 22 years for higher compensation over son’s death. Both died before it came

A couple from Hisar, Haryana, who spent 22 years in court seeking higher compensation for their son’s death in a 2001 road accident did not live to receive it. The Punjab and Haryana High Court raised the award from ₹1 lakh to ₹3,85,468 on October 8, 2026, but the father, Jaiprakash, had died in 2014, and the mother, Parmeshwari Devi, died five or six days after the verdict, The Times of India and Dainik Tribune reported.

Their son, Shakti Singh, was cycling home on March 15, 2001, when a van hit him from behind near the fish-breeding centre on Sirsa Road in Hisar, according to senior advocate Jagbir Singh Dalal. Seriously injured, he was taken to the civil hospital and then to a private hospital, where he died the next day.

On June 14, 2004, the Motor Accident Claims Tribunal in Hisar awarded the parents ₹1 lakh and ordered that the money be kept in a fixed deposit for 12 months. The couple received it a year later but did not consider it enough, and an appeal seeking a higher award was filed in the high court on September 13, 2004.

The appeal took 22 years to be decided. Jaiprakash died on October 14, 2014, about ten years after it was filed, and the case carried on without him.

On October 8 this year, Justice Amarinder Singh Grewal increased the compensation to ₹3,85,468 and ordered interest at 7.5% a year from the date the appeal was filed until payment. Parmeshwari Devi died five or six days later. The enhanced amount, with interest, was deposited in the bank only after both parents had died, the reports said.

Dalal, a former vice-chairperson of the Bar Council of India, said the case showed how delayed justice amounts to justice denied. Laws that provide compensation to families of accident victims are meant to ensure that dependants do not have to beg for a living after losing a family member, he said.

“When a decision on compensation takes decades, and those entitled to relief die while waiting, the delay becomes a cruel joke on the affected family,” Dalal said, The Times of India reported.

He has called for a fixed time limit for deciding accident-compensation claims and their appeals, so that bereaved families get relief while it can still help them.