AWADHESH KUMAR Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS miscellaneous appeal has been filed against the order dated 14.8.2008 passed by the Railway Claims Tribunal, Patna Bench, Patna in Claim Application No. O. A. 9700264 filed on 19.11.1997. By virtue of the said order the claim application of the appellants stands rejected primarily on the ground that factum of death of Hari Mohan Sah, who happens to be the father of the present appellants, did not happen in the train accident as a bona fide passenger, which disentitles the claimants from grant of compensation prayed for in the claim case.

(2.) THE claim application was filed on 19.11.1997 on behalf of the claimants for payment of Rs.2 Lacs as compensation due to death of Hari Mohan Sah, which is supposed to have taken place on 20th of November, 1996. One thing which is significant is that the claim application has been moved one day short of one year of the date of the incidence and what took the claimants so long to decide to move the railway authorities for compensation and wait till the fag end of the period of limitation prescribed, may not be required to be looked into but one thing can be safely deducted by the Court that a lot of deliberations and planning of things have been gone behind the institution of the claim.

(3.) SOME of the salient features which have been taken note of by the tribunal in its decision is that there is variation in the manner in which incidence is supposed to have happened, the person who supposed to have been traveling on the date of the incidence, the factum and the place of the incidence, the fact that there are no records to reflect that such an incidence actually happened at Mansi Station as there are no records supporting or reporting such an incidence, there are clear finding emerging with regard to the authenticity of the so-called second class ticket purchased by the deceased or purchased by one of the claimants and handed over to the deceased because findings have come that no ticket of that serial number had been sold within ten days of the incidence. In addition to that, it has also emerged that the U.D. case which was supposed to have been registered at Mansi was instituted not by the police on its own but on a written complaint by the son of the deceased two days after the incidence. There is a clear evidence available on record in this regard. If the incidence had happened as narrated in the claim case then a natural corollary would have been that U.D. case would have been registered by Mansi police on the date of incidence and not galvanized to take action at the filing of a complaint by the son of the deceased, two days after the incidence.