UK Court Orders Damages to Schoolgirl

London: A UK court ordered an Indian-origin doctor to pay approximately Rs 1.41 crore in damages to a schoolgirl who she hit with her luxury car in 2018, causing severe head injuries and health complications.

Dr Shanthi Chandran was on her way to work in Buckinghamshire, driving her BMW i3 Range Extender on Buckingham Road in Bicester, Oxfordshire, when she collided with the then-12-year-old in January 2018.

The consultant physician hit the girl, now 18, who had stepped onto the pedestrian crossing when the light was green for traffic, the Oxford Mail newspaper reported on Saturday.

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A police officer said with the force of the collision, the girl’s body was “thrown” or carried 11 metres beyond the pedestrian crossing and almost to the entrance of a nearby petrol station. She had a severe head injury, a bleed to the brain and fractured her left collarbone, the report said.

She was also “left with cognitive and psychiatric problems” and suffered nightmares and “PTSD-type symptoms for the first year after the accident”, according to court documents.

In a judgement published last week, Deputy High Court Judge Dexter Dias KC ordered Dr Chandran to pay the girl 135,000 pounds (Rs 1.41 crore) in damages.

The case brought by the girl was that Dr Chandran’s negligence caused the incident, that she “was driving too fast given the prevailing conditions and if she were driving at a safe and reasonable speed, the collision would not have happened”.

The court found that the defendant was primarily responsible for the collision and apportioned liability 60/40 in the claimant’s favour. It determined a 40 per cent reduction in the initially proposed GBP 225,000 damages “because of the contributory negligence of the claimant stepping out into the road while the traffic lights were green for traffic,” the report said.

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