RAMCHANDRA JAGANNATH Vs. GREAT INDIAN PENINSULA RAILWAY

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The plaintiff in this suit claims from the defendant railway company Rs. 25000 as damages. It appears that, on 16th September 191G, the plaintiff delivered to the defendant railway company, at the Victoria Terminus Station, a parcel containing twenty-four account- books consigned to the plaintiffs firm at Nagpur for carriage from the Victoria Terminus Station to Nagpur. It appears that, on or about the 21st September 1016, the plaintiff s agent presented the railway receipt and claimed delivery of the parcel in question but he was informed by the defendant company s agent that the parcel belonging to the plaintiff had been received at Nagpur but the same had by mistake been delivered to a representative of the Superintendent of the Central Jail at Nagpur and it was afterwards ascertained that the Jail authorities had practically destroyed all the account-books contained in that parcel.

(2.) The defendants say that the account-books were "writings" within the meaning of the second Schedule to the Indian Railways Act, 1890, and that as the plaintiff claims more than Rs. 100 in this suit and that as neither the plaintiff nor the person sending or delivering the parcel to the defendant company caused its value or contents to be declared or declared them at the time of the delivery as required by Section 75 of the Indian Railways Act, they, by virtue of the provisions of the said section, are not responsible for the loss or destruction of the parcel or the account-books. Hence the present suit.

(3.) Pursuant to the consent Chamber Order, dated 20th December 1917, this suit appeared before mo for the trial of the preliminary issue, viz., Whether the defendants are protected from liability to the plaintiff under Section 75 of the Indian Railways Act, 1890V