Justice Syed Qamar Hasan Rizvi, Allahabad High Court, Lucknow Bench
Body Found In Multiple Pieces Not Conclusive Proof Of Exceptions U/S 124A Railways Act To Deny Compensation: Allahabad High Court
|The Bench noted that the initial burden of bona fide travel discharged by claimant cannot be defeated merely due to non-recovery of ticket.
The Allahabad High Court, Lucknow Bench has held that the mere fact that a passenger’s body was recovered in multiple chopped pieces from a railway track cannot lead to an automatic inference under Section 124A of the Railways Act, 1989 to deny compensation under. Reversing the order of the Railway Claims Tribunal, it observed that when a passenger accidentally falls from a moving train, the generated force can pull the body under the wheels, resulting in body fragmentation.
The Court emphasized that for the Railway Administration to invoke the statutory exceptions of strict liability under Section 124A of the Act, it must lead cogent and substantial evidence rather than relying on mere assumptions. The Court reiterated that the Railways cannot defeat a claim simply by citing non-recovery of the ticket without producing its own ticket sales records or independent rebuttal evidence.
A Single Judge Bench comprising Justice Syed Qamar Hasan Rizvi observed, “…the mere fact that the body of the deceased was found in multiple pieces cannot, by itself, lead to a conclusive inference that the case was one of the circumstances specified in the proviso to Section 124A of the Railways Act, 1989. For attracting the exceptions contained in the proviso to Section 124-A of the Railways Act, 1989, the Railways is required to establish the same by leading cogent and substantial evidence”.
“…it would not be out of place to observe that in certain cases where a passenger accidentally loses balance due to sudden jolting, overcrowding or abrupt movement / braking of a running train and falls therefrom, the possibility of the passenger coming into contact with the wheels or other moving parts of the train, cannot be ruled out. In such a situation, a human body may sustain grievous injuries, including severance or fragmentation, depending upon the manner and circumstances of the fall…”, it noted further.
Advocate Manish Kumar Srivastava appeared for the appellant and Advocate Nishant Shukla appeared for the respondent.
The case originated from an incident on November 21, 2011, when the deceased, Shiv Narayan Singh, boarded the Lal Qila Express from Etawah to travel to Delhi. During the journey, he accidentally fell from the running train near Sarai Bhupat Railway Station and sustained fatal injuries. His widow, Lali, filed a claim petition before the Railway Claims Tribunal seeking compensation, producing eyewitness testimony from the deceased's brother who witnessed the ticket purchase and boarding.
The Railway Claims Tribunal, Lucknow Bench, dismissed the original application on September 28, 2017. The Tribunal concluded that because no ticket was recovered from the body and the corpse was found severed into three pieces with a crushed head, the incident constituted a case of being "run over" while crossing tracks rather than an "untoward incident" under Section 123(c)(2) read with Section 124A of the Railways Act.
Setting aside the Tribunal's findings, the Court noted that emergency jolts, overcrowding, or abrupt braking frequently cause violent falls where victims frantically try to hold on, drawing them under the train wheels. Relying on the Apex Court rulings in Union of India v. Rina Devi and Union of India v. Radha Yadav, the Court held that the claimant had successfully discharged the initial burden via unimpeached witness testimony. The Court noted that the Railways failed to adduce any independent oral, documentary, or expert evidence to show that the deceased was not a passenger.
Allowing the appeal, the Court directed the Respondent-Railways to pay a lump-sum statutory enhanced compensation of ₹8,00,000/- to the appellant within eight weeks. The Court ordered that failure to deposit the amount within the stipulated timeframe would attract an interest rate of 9% per annum from the expiry of eight weeks until actual payment.
Cause Title: Lali v. Union Of India Through General Manager North Central Railway (Neutral Citation: 2026:AHC-LKO:58096)
Appearances:
Appellant: Manish Kumar Srivastava, Advocates.
Respondent: Nishant Shukla, Neerav Chitravanshi, Shiv P. Shukla, Advocates.