Kamal Singh & Ors. vs Union Of India

The present Miscellaneous Appeal has been preferred by the appellants under Section 23 of the Railway Claims Tribunal Act, 1987, being aggrieved by the order dated 21.09.2012 passed by the Railway Claims Tribunal, Bhopal Bench in O.A. No.493/2008, whereby the claim application preferred by the appellants has been dismissed.

The case of the appellants is that on 07.09.2008 deceased Ashish along with his friend Sitaram had gone to Ratlam and thereafter to Mandsaur to visit relatives and, while returning to Indore during the night of 08.09.2008, allegedly boarded Train No.9656 Ajmer-Ratlam Passenger at Mandsaur. According to the appellants, Ashish was travelling in the general compartment, where he met his friends Dinesh Borkhade and Deepak Agarwal, and because of heavy rush he was standing near the door; when the train reached near Dalouda Railway Station, due to pushing by passengers, he lost his balance, fell from the running train and died.

Learned counsel for the appellants submits that the Tribunal committed an error in refusing to treat deceased Ashish as a bona fide passenger merely because no ticket was found on his person. It is contended that the burden to establish that the deceased was a ticketless traveller was upon the Railway Administration and that such burden was not discharged. Learned counsel further submits that the Naksha Panchayatnama recorded recovery of two railway tickets bearing Nos. D-79579749 and D-79579185 and, on the basis thereof, a presumption ought to have been drawn that the deceased had also purchased a ticket at Mandsaur for his return journey. It is also urged that the Naksha Panchayatnama and autopsy report supported the case of the appellants that the deceased had fallen from the train and that the Tribunal erred in relying upon the DRM Report when there was no eyewitness and the Railway had not examined the concerned railway employees.

Learned counsel places reliance upon the judgment of the Hon’ble Supreme Court in Sukhabhai Nanjibhai Makwana and another v. Union of India 2026 INSC 1056, to contend that a belated investigation report prepared contrary to the requirement of expeditious investigation under the Railway Passengers (Manner of Investigation of Untoward Incidents) Rules, 2020 cannot be safely relied upon.

Per contra, learned counsel for the respondent-Railway submits that the appellants failed to establish that deceased Ashish was a bona fide passenger of Train No.9656. It is submitted that no ticket for the alleged journey from Mandsaur to Indore was recovered from the deceased and the tickets referred to in the record related to an earlier journey from Indore to Ratlam. The DRM Report recorded a different sequence of events, as the deceased and his companion had travelled without tickets, were handed over to the GRP and thereafter the deceased was walking along the railway track when he was struck by an unknown train. It is further submitted that neither the appellant Kamal Singh nor witness Deepak Agarwal stated that the deceased had purchased or possessed a valid ticket for the alleged journey from Mandsaur to Indore. The Tribunal rightly noticed that the appellants had no direct knowledge regarding purchase of the alleged return ticket and that the material witness Sitaram, who was accompanying the deceased, was not examined. On these grounds, he prays of dismissal of appeal.

Heard the learned counsel for the parties and have perused the record.

The most material aspect is that the appellants were required to establish that deceased Ashish was a bona fide passenger of Train No.9656 Ajmer-Ratlam Passenger. Admittedly, no ticket relating to the alleged journey from Mandsaur to Indore was recovered from the deceased. The two tickets referred to in the Naksha Panchayatnama were for the journey from Indore to Ratlam and, therefore, could not establish that Ashish had purchased a ticket for the subsequent journey from Mandsaur to Indore, which is the journey during which the appellants claim that he fell from Train No.9656.

The appellant Kamal Singh, who examined himself before the Tribunal, did not state anything that the deceased had purchased or possessed a ticket for the alleged return journey. Likewise, witness Deepak Agarwal, who was produced by the appellants, also did not state anything regarding the travel with ticket. Thus, the initial factual foundation necessary to treat the deceased as a bona fide passenger was itself not established by the evidence led by the appellants.

The reliance placed by learned counsel for the appellants upon Sukhabhai Nanjibhai Makwana (supra), particularly paragraph -11 thereof, also does not assist the appellants in the facts of the present case. In the said judgment, the Apex Court was dealing with a materially different evidentiary situation where the claimant's father had specifically pleaded that the railway ticket had been lost and had expressly deposed on oath that his son had purchased the ticket; the Railways' witnesses had also admitted that they had not searched the victim's pocket. It was in those circumstances that the Supreme Court held that mere absence of recovery of a ticket would not defeat the claim and that the belated investigation report could be ignored.

In the present case, even if the objection of the appellants regarding the DRM Report dated 16.07.2009 not having been prepared within the stipulated period of 90 days is accepted and the said report is kept aside, the appellants still fail to prove that the deceased was a bona fide passenger. The objection regarding delay in preparation of the DRM Report cannot substitute the positive evidence which was required from the appellants to establish the deceased's bona fide passenger status. The Tribunal, after considering the evidence of Deepak Agarwal and the circumstances emerging from his statement to the police, found several gaps and concluded that the evidence more reasonably indicated that the deceased who is addicted to drugs was walking alongside the railway track and was hit by an unknown train. It also noticed that Sitaram, who was admittedly with the deceased during the relevant period, was not examined. The Tribunal consequently decided Issues Nos.1 and 2 against the applicants. The said finding is based upon appreciation of evidence and cannot be said to be perverse or contrary to the record.

Consequently, this Court finds no ground to interfere with the order dated 21.09.2012 passed by the Railway Claims Tribunal, Bhopal Bench in O.A. No.493/2008. The findings recorded by the Tribunal are well founded and do not suffer from any perversity or illegality. Accordingly, the Miscellaneous Appeal is dismissed.