BHOPAL: An Aadhaar card cannot, by itself, be treated as conclusive proof of a person’s age, and a medical assessment recorded in a postmortem report can be a more reliable basis, the Madhya Pradesh High Court has ruled while increasing compensation to the parents of a minor boy killed in a road accident.




The Gwalior bench, presided over by Justice Amit Seth, held that the age of the deceased, Harendra Singh Baghel , should be taken as 13 years, as recorded in his postmortem report, and not 14 years, seven months and nine days, as mentioned on his Aadhaar card. The court observed that Aadhaar is primarily an identity document and cannot, by itself, conclusively establish a person's age.




The November 3 order came on an appeal filed by the boy’s parents, who sought higher compensation than the amount awarded by the Motor Accident Claims Tribunal in Bhind. The tribunal had awarded Rs 5.45 lakh, with 6% annual interest, for the boy’s death in a road accident on December 24, 2019.




The High Court increased the compensation to Rs 8.25 lakh, an increase of Rs 2.80 lakh, and directed that it carry 6% annual interest from the date the original claim was filed until the amount is paid.




The dispute centred on the boy’s age and the assessment of his notional income. The parents challenged the tribunal’s assessment of his notional monthly income at Rs 25,000, arguing that it should have been based on the minimum wage for an unskilled worker at the time of the accident. Their counsel, Dharmendra Rishishwar, submitted that the minimum wage was Rs 7,950 a month.




The insurance company, represented by counsel Bal Krishna Agrawal, filed cross-objections challenging the tribunal’s findings on the boy’s age and the multiplier it had used. It argued that the tribunal had wrongly relied on the Aadhaar card, while the postmortem report recorded the boy’s age as 13 and the medical assessment should be preferred.




Accepting this argument, Justice Seth said the age recorded in the postmortem report was based on a medical examination and was more reliable in the circumstances of the case. He fixed the boy’s age at 13 at the time of the accident.




The insurer also challenged the tribunal’s use of a multiplier of 18, arguing that the correct multiplier for a child below 15 years of age was 15.




The parents’ counsel relied on Supreme Court rulings, including Ku Aarti (November 2025), in which a multiplier of 18 was applied in the case of a nine-year-old, and an April 2026 decision by a coordinate bench of the High Court.




The High Court examined the legal position and referred to the Supreme Court’s judgment in Divya vs National Insurance Company Ltd, which discussed the apparent inconsistency in applying multipliers in cases involving children below 15 years of age. It also cited the three-judge bench ruling in Reshma Kumari, which held that a multiplier of 15 applies when the deceased was up to 15 years old, whether the claim is filed under Section 166 or Section 163A of the Motor Vehicles Act.




On this basis, Justice Seth held that since Harendra was below 15 years of age, the applicable multiplier was 15.