Supreme Court: The order of the Allahabad High Court was set aside, said – if the reason for the fire is not natural, then it cannot be called ‘Act of God’

The Supreme Court said that if the cause of fire is not natural then it cannot be called ‘Act of God’ (divine calamity). A bench of Justice AM Khanwilkar, Justice Dinesh Maheshwari and Justice Krishna Murari made this observation while setting aside the order of the Allahabad High Court which had termed the fire incident at McDowell’s godown of a liquor company as ‘Act of God’ and He was exempted from excise duty.

The bench, in its judgment, said that it was not a case where the fire was caused by natural forces like storm, flood, lightning or earthquake. If the incident of fire is not caused by any external natural force, then in legal parlance it cannot be referred to by ‘Act of God’. The top court also observed that the fire was not caused by mischief of any person.

Significantly, the fire, which started around 12:55 pm on April 10, 2003, was brought under control at 5 am the next day. “When all relevant factors are taken into account as a whole, we find it difficult to accept that the fire and the consequent damage was out of control,” the bench said.

The top court said that the fire did not arise on its own and with proper firefighting measures the incident could have been avoided or at least the damage could have been minimized. The Supreme Court has said that the observations of the High Court in this regard do not seem to be correct and need to be disallowed. The top court was hearing a plea by the Excise Department of Uttar Pradesh challenging the High Court order seeking loss of excise revenue from McDowell Company on account of destruction of liquor in the fire.

The High Court had held that the order of the Excise Commissioner seeking excise revenue of Rs 6.39 crore was based on estimates. The Excise Commissioner passed the order without having any concrete evidence about the negligence on the part of the company. At the same time, the High Court had said that this incident is nothing but an ‘Act of God’.