LAWS(DLH)-2014-3-483

KANTI DEVI & ORS Vs. UNION OF INDIA

Decided On March 18, 2014
Kanti Devi And Ors Appellant
V/S
UNION OF INDIA Respondents

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This first appeal shows that how the establishment of the Railway Claims Tribunal is misused by unscrupulous people to get the statutory compensation, which is of a large amount of Rs. 4 lacs. I am forced to observe that the present litigation is false because whereas in almost every case of an incident happening of a train accident or of fall from a train, there exist not one but numerous documents/reports which are prepared of the same date and immediate following dates including of recording of various statements from different witnesses of the untoward incident. Whenever there is a train accident/untoward incident, invariably there is either the report of a Railway official including a driver or a guard of a train or a station master or railway police, or the local police and so on. However, in the present case, there is only one document on the basis of which the claim petition is filed alleging an untoward incident, and which is the self-serving statement made to the police on 29.3.2009, although the incident is alleged to be of 22.2.2009 ie 35 days earlier.

(2.) The facts as pleaded by the appellant/applicant were that the deceased Sh. Suresh Prasad boarded train no. 2506 DN North East Express at New Delhi Junction for travelling to Patna and that when the train was approaching the Patna Junction, the deceased Suresh Prasad fell down from the train on account of jostling between the passengers. It is claimed that Suresh Prasad was thereafter brought to Patna Medical College Hospital for treatment and was discharged on 11.4.2009. It may be noted that the deceased Suresh Prasad was alive when he filed the claim petition, but, he expired during the pendency of the proceedings before the Railway Claims Tribunal.

(3.) In the present case, admittedly, no train ticket was recovered from the jamatalashi/search of the person of Suresh Prasad either by the hospital authorities or by any railway official or by the police official. Not only there was no train ticket found or filed, the fact of the matter is that it is not as if the deceased Suresh Prasad had no friends or relatives who would not have reported the train accident/untoward incident to either the railway authorities or to the police authorities if not on the same date of the incident but soon thereafter. Therefore, I agree with the conclusion of the Railway Claims Tribunal that the deceased was not a bonafide passenger, and in fact he was not even travelling on the train from which he is alleged to have fallen off or for that matter from any train.