A Thane Motor Accident Claims Tribunal has awarded ₹5.17 lakh, with 9% annual interest, to a 44-year-old agriculturist who was left permanently disabled after a Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation bus collided with his motorcycle back in October 2019.

The order came on September 8. The tribunal was blunt about where the fault lay: the ST bus driver, and nobody else.

Here's what happened, going by the tribunal's findings. On the night of October 13, 2019, Ananta Mahadu Vishe was riding home from Umbhrai village with Shripat Bhau Ubale seated behind him. Around 8.30 pm, an ST bus coming from the opposite direction tried to overtake a tempo, according to the claimant's account, and in doing so crossed onto the wrong side of the road. It hit Vishe's motorcycle head-on.

Both men went down hard. Vishe was rushed to Meera Hospital in Kalyan first, then moved to SMBT Hospital in Nashik as his injuries turned out to be serious. He had swelling and pain across his face, couldn't open his mouth properly, and doctors put him on six months of rest.

Ubale, the pillion rider, did not survive. He died from his injuries the following day.

Kinhavali police booked the ST bus driver under stringent IPC sections along with Sections 184 and 186 of the Motor Vehicles Act, and a chargesheet followed.

MSRTC's defence, when the case reached the tribunal, was that the motorcycle had been speeding with no lights and no signals, and that Vishe himself was 50% responsible for what happened. Contributory negligence, in legal terms, cutting the payout in half if it stuck.

It didn't stick.

The tribunal noted that while the bus driver and conductor both backed the corporation's version of events, the driver had never actually filed a complaint against the motorcyclist. He also never challenged the chargesheet, not before the police, not in any court. That silence mattered. The tribunal held that Vishe had established the accident was caused by the ST driver's rash and negligent driving, full stop, and rejected the negligence-sharing argument outright.

The ₹5.17 lakh award, with interest running from the date of the claim, is now MSRTC's liability. Whether the corporation appeals the order is the open question, and given how firmly the tribunal shut down its contributory negligence argument, an appeal would need fresh grounds to go anywhere.

For Vishe, six years on from a crash that cost him his mobility and cost his fellow rider his life, the order closes one chapter of a case that took nearly as long to move through the tribunal as the injuries did to heal.