The Supreme Court has held that the mere non-recovery of a railway ticket from the body of a deceased passenger cannot, by itself, disentitle the victim’s family from claiming compensation under the Railways Act, setting aside the concurrent decisions of the Railway Claims Tribunal and the Madhya Pradesh High Court which had rejected a widow’s claim on that ground.
A Bench of Justice Sanjay Karol and Justice Nongmeikapam Kotiswar Singh allowed the appeal filed by Lata, whose husband Chandrakant Thakkar died after accidentally falling from the Ahmedabad-Howrah Mail in November 2015. The appellant had contended that the deceased’s journey ticket was kept in his travel bag, which went missing after the accident. The Railway Claims Tribunal and the High Court, however, denied compensation after holding that the deceased had not been proved to be a bona fide passenger.
Reversing those findings, the Court reiterated that compensation under Section 124A of the Railways Act is based on a “no-fault liability” principle and that beneficial legislation must receive a liberal interpretation consistent with its humanitarian purpose. In a significant observation, the Bench said:
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“Technical approaches and lapses in procedure should not defeat the welfare aim of the statute as it does not befit the Railways, as an instrumentality of the State, to take such restrictive, pigeonhole view. The governing standard is the preponderance of probabilities and not beyond reasonable doubt, as in criminal trials. The foundational facts that need to be established are – (i) travelling on the basis of a valid ticket; and (ii) an accident leading to death. Courts and Tribunals should always take a view that retains the objective of the Section as being accessible compensation with an underlying humanitarian perspective.”
Referring to its earlier decisions in Union of India v. Rina Devi and Doli Rani Saha v. Union of India, (2019) 3 SCC 572 the Court held that the claimant had discharged the initial burden by filing an affidavit stating that the ticket had been kept in the missing travel bag. Since there was no dispute regarding the accidental fall from the train or the death, the absence of the ticket alone could not defeat the claim.
Allowing the appeal, the Court awarded ₹8 lakh as compensation to the appellant and directed the Union of India to release the amount within four weeks, failing which it would carry 8% interest from the date of filing of the claim petition.
