NIRMALA AND ANOTHER Vs. UOI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) C.M. No. 3332-CI of 2014

(2.) The present appeal filed under Section 23 of the Railways Act, 1989 (in short 'the Act') is directed against the order dated 19.10.2012 passed by the Railways Claims Tribunal, Chandigarh Bench. The claimants are the wife and the son of the deceased namely Om Parkash. The claim has been rejected by the Tribunal on the ground that the deceased was not a bona fide passenger at the time of the accident on 25.10.2009 and, therefore, the death was not covered under the ambit of an untoward incident as defined under Section 123(c)(2) of the Act. The reasoning given as such is that the statement made of the witnesses namely the son and the son-in-law that he had boarded the Dadar Express stood falsified in as much as the Dadar Express was late and had arrived much later after the untoward incident had taken place. The injuries suffered on the person of the deceased were also scrutinized to come to a conclusion that they could not have been on account of being hit by a train on the ground that if a person falls from a moving train, the body would generally roll over the ballasts and will not get stained with grease as it does not come in contact with the engine/train. The factum of staining of body parts with grease showed that the deceased might have been entangled with the engine/train or some part thereof. In the absence of a ticket as such not having been recovered from the deceased, the denial of the claim has, thus, been made though a finding has been recorded that he did died due to being hit/entangled with some unknown train, which is not an untoward incident as defined under the Act.

(3.) A perusal of the record would go on to show that it was the specific claim that the claimants who are residents of Rajasthan that they had come to Beas for the religious purpose on 24.10.2009 from their village. After attending the religious ceremony, the deceased, who was aged about 65 years, had asked his son-in-law that he also wanted to visit Golden Temple at Amritsar. On this, his son-in-law left him at Railway Station, Beas after purchasing a ticket for him for Amritsar and he had boarded the train at about 3.30 p.m. The claim was that he was a bona fide passenger and was travelling on a second class general ticket which was lost during the accident. It was further mentioned that the post-mortem had been conducted at Medical College, Amritsar on 26.10.2009.