Page 55 - Insurance Times June 2023

Mosquito bite in hospital can't be called ther the terms of the insurance policy, nor legal precedents
"permit interpreting any disease caused by a mosquito bite
an accident in India: Calcutta High Court
as an accident."
A death that resulted from a mosquito bite in hospital
"Suffering a mosquito bite in the sanitised confines of a
couldn't be called an "accident" in India that would be eli-
hospital may be an unwanted and unwarranted incident at
gible for an accident insurance claim, the Calcutta High
best; it is not something which is fortuitous, such as to
Court ruled.
startle the sufferer (the 'bitten') as being unexpected," the
The court turned down a woman's plea for the death of judge said. She also referred to a 2019 Supreme Court judg-
her son - from dengue developed after a mosquito bite, ment in a near-similar issue.
apart from other complications - to be treated as an acci-
In that instance, a bench of justices D Y Chandrachud and
dent because it was "least expected" in the sanitised envi-
Hemant Gupta had turned down a National Consumer Dis-
ronments of a hospital.
putes Redressal Commission order which had interpreted a
Justice Moushumi Bhattacharya was hearing an appeal filed mosquito bite to be an accident. In that case, a person
by Chitra Mukherjee, whose son Chayan - an Army man - based in Barasat, who used to work as a tea garden man-
died of dengue while being treated for complications, in- ager in Mozambique, had died in November 2012 from
cluding kidney disease, after knee surgery at the Command malaria. The insurance company had turned down his
Hospital in Alipore in December 2021. Eight days before his family's claims.
death, he had developed dengue, with the death certifi- In that instance, the Supreme Court had mentioned the
cate mentioning both dengue and end-stage renal disease frequency of malaria in Mozambique, which accounts for
as cause of death. 5% of malaria cases globally, and where one in three people
get the disease.
Chitra filed an accident insurance with the United India In-
surance Company but got turned down in September the "In light of these statistics, the illness of encephalitis ma-
following year on the ground that the cause of death was laria through a mosquito bite cannot be considered as an
non-accidental. This had prompted her to move court. Chitra accident. It was neither unexpected nor unforeseen," the
had argued that the mosquito bite should be treated as an bench had observed.
accident as it occurred in a hospital, where it was unex-
Justice Bhattacharya referred to this judgment and con-
pected. She had also said that insurance policies of Army
cluded that a mosquito bite could not be considered an
personnel should be treated differently from that of civilians.
accident in India. "It cannot be said that mosquito bites and
Justice Bhattacharya said the insurance company's refusal resulting diseases are unforeseen events... to a resident of
could not be seen as "arbitrary or unreasonable", as nei- Kolkata," she said.

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50 June 2023 The Insurance Times