The Maharashtra State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission said United India could not deny a textile factory’s fire claim over alleged construction, electricity and safety breaches after inspecting the premises and accepting premiums.
The Maharashtra State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission has ordered United India General Insurance Company to pay ₹87.33 lakh to the owner of a Solapur textile factory after rejecting the insurer’s refusal to honour a fire claim. The commission said the company had failed to justify its decision to deny payment over alleged unauthorised construction, an unauthorised electricity connection and the absence of firefighting equipment, even though the business had paid for cover for its factory building, machinery, stock and raw materials.
According to the commission, Mateshri Textile had bought three policies with a combined insured value of ₹91.50 lakh to protect its industrial assets against fire and other accidental risks. The claim arose after a fire, said to have been caused by an electrical short circuit, damaged the factory. The owner assessed the loss at ₹87,33,324 and submitted material including primary records, a police panchnama, fire brigade reports and intimation to the insurer’s surveyor, the Free Press Journal reported.
The insurer rejected the claim in July 2018, arguing that the factory had breached policy conditions and that the loss had not been proven with enough expert accounting evidence. But the commission said such objections could not, on their own, defeat a claim for accidental fire unless they had been made an express condition of cover. It also said an insurer that inspects premises, issues a policy and accepts premiums cannot later rely on pre-existing deviations unless those issues materially changed the risk or were fraudulently concealed and linked to the loss.
The commission ordered the insurer to pay the assessed loss with 9% interest from the date the claim was repudiated in 2019, along with ₹1 lakh for mental agony and ₹50,000 towards litigation costs. The ruling comes as the same insurer has recently faced other adverse decisions before the Maharashtra consumer commission, including a separate case involving a luxury car destroyed by fire after a highway puncture, in which the court again took a sceptical view of technical defences raised against a claim.
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