Page 58 - Insurance Times April 2023

ence of such debt is itself in dispute in view of various tors provide treatment accordingly. The insurer was ordered
correspondence(s) placed on record.” to pay Joshi Rs 3,000 for mental harassment and Rs 2,000
towards litigation costs.
Hospitalisation not must for claiming
Chhattisgarh man fakes family's death
medical insurance
for insurance money
A person can claim insurance even if s/he was not admit-
ted to a hospital, or was admitted for less than 24 hours, a Under debt and pressure from loan sharks, a man faked his
Vadodara consumer forum observed while ordering an in- and his family’s death by leaving a charred car in Kanker
surance firm to make a payout to Rameshchandra Joshi, a district in Bastar division of Chhattisgarh and going missing
resident of the city. on March 1. He hoped to get Rs 72 lakh as death claim from
insurers and planned to pay off his debts worth Rs 35 lakh.
The Vadodara Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission
(additional) observed that with the advent of new technol- In 13 days flat, his plan was unmasked as a manhunt by
ogy, patients sometimes are treated in lesser time or with- police, convinced that the family was alive, forced business-
out being hospitalised. “If the patient isn’t admitted, or is man Samiran Sikdar (29) to return on Tuesday. Police said
treated in less time after being admitted due to new tech- Samiran, his wife Jaya, and their two children went missing
niques, the insurance firm can’t reject the claim by saying without a trace and their burned car was found near a for-
that the patient wasn’t admitted,” the forum added. est in Charama.
While the police were busy scanning CCTV footage and trac-
Joshi had filed a complaint against National Insurance Com-
ing mobile phones of the family, Samiran was switching lo-
pany Ltd in August 2017 after the firm rejected his claim.
cations as he travelled to Allahabad, Patna, Guwahati,
Joshi’s wife had dermatomyositis in 2016 and was admit-
Ranchi and Sambalpur.
ted to Lifecare Institute of Medical Science and Research
Centre in Ahmedabad. She was discharged the next day Kanker SP Shalabh Sinha said that on March 1, while re-
after treatment. turning from Raipur, Samiran halted at Dhamtari and
checked in at a hotel where he left his family and drove
Joshi filed for an insurance claim of Rs 44,468 but the firm
towards Charama. He dashed the car to a roadside tree
rejected it by citing clause 3.15 and arguing that she wasn’t
and torched it with the fuel he had brought.
admitted continuously for 24 hours as per the clause in the
policy. He presented all the documents before the consumer He then walked down to the bus stand and went back to
forum and stated that his wife was admitted at 5.38 pm Dhamtari from where the entire family took buses to travel
on November 24, 2016 and discharged at 6.30 pm on No- to other cities, including Raipur, where he was last seen at
vember 25, 2016, which was over 24 hours. The forum said a photo studio. His mobile phone was switched off, but he
that even if it is assumed that the patient was admitted to managed a temporary number and a handset in Allahabad
a hospital for less than 24 hours, in the modern age new through which he kept a tab on news reports and details of
treatments and medicines have been developed and doc- police investigation.

Insurers, pension cos must back startups

At a time when the global economic downturn has squeezed overseas funding for local startups substantially, Amitabh
Kant, India’s G20 Sherpa has made a case for domestic insurance companies and pension funds to take the lead in
investing into startups.
“The challenge is that Indian insurance companies and pension funds are still not investing in startups. There’s a vast
amount of investable sums. They must be asked to put more and more resources into Indian startups,” Kant said at
a summit in New Delhi.
Much of the growth to late stage startups are heavily dependent on external funding to support and grow their
businesses. Investors like Japan’s SoftBank, US-based Tiger Global are among the biggest backers of Indian startups.
“Money (into startups) comes from Silicon Valley or many other funds from across the world. Indian startups must
start attracting Indian money,” said Kant, while adding that pension funds and insurance firms could perhaps look at
the possibility of setting up a funding corpus like the ‘fund of funds’ to support startups working in new, emerging
areas like deep tech.

50 April 2023 The Insurance Times