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Outbyte Driver Updater FREEFix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Outbyte PC Repair FREEClear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →The Gujarat High Court has held that income-tax returns cannot be dismissed as fabricated on an insurer’s bare assertion, and that future prospects in motor-accident compensation are not confined to people in permanent employment. In United India Insurance Co. Ltd. v. Pankajkumar Mahendrasinh Beravat & Anr., the court dismissed the insurer’s appeal and left the reported compensation award of ₹12,95,280 in place. The ruling treats tax returns as relevant evidence, not as automatically conclusive proof of income.
What the Gujarat High Court decided
Justice J. C. Doshi decided United India Insurance Co. Ltd. v. Pankajkumar Mahendrasinh Beravat & Anr., R/First Appeal No. 2637 of 2025, with Civil Application (for stay) No. 1 of 2025. LiveLaw identifies its report as 2026 LiveLaw (Guj) 279. The court dismissed United India Insurance Company’s appeal against the Motor Accident Claims Tribunal’s award.
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The reported award was ₹12,95,280, with interest at 7% per annum from the filing of the claim petition until realization, according to CourtBook. It included future loss of income, actual loss of income, pain and suffering, and related expenses. Those are case-specific figures, not a general compensation formula.
Why the claimant’s income-tax returns mattered
The claimant, Pankajkumar Mahendrasinh Beravat, was injured in a motorcycle accident in Dahod on 25 March 2012. CourtBook reports that he was a third-year civil-engineering diploma student and also worked as a civil contractor. He claimed income of about ₹28,000 a month and relied on returns for four financial years. That monthly amount was his claim; it should not be treated as a separate finding established by the reporting.
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The insurer argued that it was improbable for a full-time student to earn income and alleged that the returns were fictitious. The High Court rejected that position on the record described in LiveLaw’s report. It treated income-tax returns as statutory documents relevant to income, including earnings from business or professional activity. The insurer had not produced cogent or concrete evidence that the returns were fabricated or income artificially inflated. Nor, the report says, had it disputed the returns in its written statement, through evidence, or in cross-examination.
The court’s reported reasoning was that a mere assertion of exaggeration could not displace returns without concrete evidence to the contrary. This is not a rule that every return must be accepted at face value: the decision concerns the evidentiary weight of returns where the challenge was unsupported and was not properly tested in the proceedings.
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What the decision means for challenging ITR evidence
The decision illustrates the difference between questioning evidence and proving it unreliable. An insurer or other opposing party may contest income evidence, but simply labelling returns fictitious does not establish fabrication. In this case, the reported significance was both the absence of cogent contrary material and the failure to contest the returns through the pleadings, evidence, or cross-examination.
LiveLaw reports that the court relied on the Supreme Court’s 2026 decision in Rashmirekha Tripathi and Anr. v. The Branch Manager (Legal Claims), Shriram General Insurance Company Limited and Others in rejecting the contention that a student could not earn through independent business or professional work, or that returns were filed merely to inflate income. The reports do not set out the full judgment’s citation history or detailed application of that authority.
Future prospects are not limited to permanent employees
The insurer also argued that future prospects should not be allowed because the claimant was not permanently incapacitated from his occupation. The High Court rejected the suggestion that future prospects are available only to people with permanent employment. As reported, it treated future prospects as an additional component of just and fair compensation and relied on Meena Pawaia and Others v. Ashraf Ali and Others, (2021) 17 SCC 148. CourtBook also names V. Pathmavathi v. Bharthi Axa General Insurance Company Limited.
The principle matters beyond salaried employment: the court did not exclude a claimant simply because earnings came from business or professional activity rather than a permanent job. But the reports do not state the future-prospects percentage affirmed in this case or provide enough detail to reproduce the tribunal’s calculation. The decision should not be read as establishing one percentage for every claimant or income type.
Why the appeal was dismissed
Justice Doshi cautioned that a statutory right of appeal cannot be used to re-agitate matters settled by binding precedent without showing a legal or factual flaw in the award. The court also emphasized that prolonging motor-accident claims without a sustainable basis for interference can add to the hardship of injured claimants and affected families. The appeal was dismissed, leaving the tribunal’s reported award in place.
Scope of the reported decision
The available account is based on reports by LiveLaw and CourtBook, rather than the full court order. Those reports support the holdings and case figures described above, but do not supply the complete calculation, the precise future-prospects rate, or paragraph references. Readers needing those details should consult the order itself.
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