From Exposure to Compensation: Rethinking the Evidentiary Burden in Asbestos-Related Occupational Disease Claims in India

Author

Harsh Jain, Mumal Singh and Apoorva Jamra

Abstract

 Asbestos-related diseases expose a structural weakness in occupational disease law. In an ordinary workplace accident, exposure, injury and the evidence of causation arise together. In asbestos disease they do not: the disease may emerge decades after exposure, by which time employment records may be lost, the enterprise may have closed, and exposure may never have been measured. Indian law recognises asbestos-related disease as an occupational disease and, since the decision in Consumer Education and Research Centre v Union of India, as a matter of the constitutional right to health. Yet recognition of the disease has not been matched by an evidentiary architecture capable of proving individual causation once the evidence has outlived the employment. This article identifies that gap as an 'evidentiary inversion': the longer the latency, the more remote the injury becomes from the evidence needed to establish its cause. It proposes an Exposure–Disease–Attribution (EDA) Framework under which proof of credible occupational exposure and a medically established asbestos-related disease raises a rebuttable presumption of occupational causation; a Lost Records Principle permitting an adverse inference where an employer has failed to create or preserve legally required exposure records; and a Long-Latency Rule providing for extended record retention, portable exposure histories and post-employment surveillance. Drawing on comparative experience from the United Kingdom, Australia, the United States and the International Labour Organization, the article argues that the proposals reallocate evidentiary responsibility according to institutional capacity rather than impose strict liability.

Keywords

asbestos; occupational disease; burden of proof; causation; mesothelioma; article 21; labour codes; evidentiary presumption

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References

Asbestos exposes a weakness in conventional occupational disease law. The law assumes that evidence of injury and evidence of cause exist at about the same time. Asbestos shows otherwise: the disease survives, but the evidence may not. Indian law has taken important steps, from the constitutional recognition of workers' health in Consumer Education and Research Centre to the schedules of occupational disease and the duties in the OSH Code. Yet substantive recognition does not of itself yield substantive justice, and the remaining problem is evidentiary.

This article has proposed a reallocation, not an expansion, of responsibility. Under the EDA Framework, a worker who proves credible occupational exposure and a medically recognised asbestos-related disease benefits from a rebuttable presumption of occupational causation. Under the Lost Records Principle, an employer who failed to create or preserve legally required records cannot profit from their absence. Under the Long-Latency Rule, record retention, surveillance, portable histories and a national registry are designed around the biology of the disease and not the length of the employment contract. The reforms are sustained by comparative experience, consistent with existing Indian evidence doctrine, and respectful of employers' right to rebut and of workers' privacy.

The principle underlying them is evidentiary justice: the party who creates the risk should not benefit from the disappearance of the evidence needed to prove it. The question for Indian law is not only whether an asbestos-exposed worker has a right to compensation. It is whether the rules of evidence will let the worker realistically prove the right the law has already recognised. Closing that gap between exposure and compensation should be an important objective of Indian health and occupational law.

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