UNION OF INDIA Vs. RAMESHKUMAR AND CO

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The respondents filed a suit in the Court of the Joint Civil Judge, Senior Division, Nasik, against the Union of India claiming for them as the owners and administrators of the Central and South Eastern Railways a sum of Rs. 17,612.54 P. as damages suffered by them by reason of the non-delivery of two consignments of onions delivered by them to the Western Railway Administration for carriage from Lasalgaon to Vijayanagaram. The learned Joint Civil Judge passed a decree in favour of the respondents for the amount claimed together with future interest at the rate of 4 percent per annum on the sum of Rs. 15,410 from the date of the suit till realization and the costs of the suit. It is against this judgment and decree that the present Appeal has been filed by the Union of India.

(2.) Each of the two consignments in question consisted of 335 bags of onions, each bag weighing 45 kilograms. The first consignment was booked on October 22, 1966 and the second on October 26, 1966. Both these consignments were booked at owners risk. Nothing, however, turns upon this fact. The first consignment reached Rayghada Railway Station on October 30,1966. It was unloaded there on October, 31, 1966. It appears that it was sold by the Railway Authorities by auction on or about November 1, 1966 and fetched a sum of Rs. 3, 333.23 P. The second consignment reached Rayghada Railway Station on November 2, 1966 and was sold by auction the next day, that is, on November 3, 1966 and fetched a sum of Rs. 5,695.

(3.) In the railway receipts both the consignors and the consignees were shown as the respondents. The respondents had sent these railway receipts for taking delivery of the goods and for the sale thereof to Messrs Cherukuri Narasinga Rao, general Merchants and commission agents. The said agents informed the respondents that they had not received delivery of the consignments. According to the respondents, they deputed one Ramanlal to find out what had happened. On making inquiries it was then learnt that these goods had been disposed of by the railway administration at Rayghada. Because of this, the two railway receipts were returned to the respondents by the said agents by their letter dated November 16, 1966. In the said letter the said agents stated that they were unable to understand why the said goods had been auctioned because at the same time many wagons had reached Cutuck and Berhampur via Rayghada. Ultimately by their advocates letter dated January 25, 1967 the respondents made a claim under section 78-B of the Indian Railways Act, 1890, as also gave a notice under section 80 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, in respect of the claim which they had made in the suit. In the plaint it was stated by the respondents that their address was known to the railway authorities and in any event the same could have been easily found out, but the railway authorities negligently failed to do so and the goods were auctioned at a very low price without the respondents being informed about the consignment being held up at Rayghada. It was further alleged in the plaint that the respondents could easily taken delivery at Rayghada and would have been then able to sell the said consignments of onions at Rs. 23 per bag of 45 Kilograms. These allegations of the respondents were not denied by the appellants in their written statement. What was alleged in the written statement, however, was that after the consignments arrived at Rayghada, a station on the South Eastern Railway, it was found that the said consignment could not be dispatched further " due to dislocation of the entire train services, due to the agitation of steel plant, in Andhra Province at that time." It was further alleged in the written statement that the consignments being perishable were required to be sold by public auction at Rayghada. The amounts fetched in the auction sales were not even mentioned in the written statement. It is also significant that the written statement does not mention the dates on which the said auction sales took place. It may also be noted that even though admittedly these goods were disposed of by the railway administration and realized a total sum of Rs. 9,028.23 P., at no stage until the filing of the written statement were the respondents informed about the amount realized nor was any reply given to their claim made under section 78-B of the Indian Railways Act or to the notice given by them under section 80 of the Code of Civil Procedure. What is even more shocking is that the railway administration just sat tight on this amount and did not refund it at any time to the respondents. In their written statement the appellants did not even admit liability to refund this amount but instead contended that the respondents suit should be dismissed with costs. One would have expected the appellants, who are the owners and administrators of these two railways administrations and who are a welfare State, to have acted not like any ordinary dishonest defendant but in keeping with their character as a welfare State and to have straightway refunded this amount to the respondents after sale or at least to have brought it into Court. When the suit was filed.