Their son died of his injuries after a month in hospital, and the High Court refused the claim because nobody had kept his ticket
Two railway witnesses admitted they never searched the dead man’s pockets. The Supreme Court restores the Tribunal’s award to his parents and directs the Railways to pay within thirty days.
Section 124-A of the Railways Act, 1989 imposes strict liability on the Railways for death or injury in an “untoward incident”, and asks almost nothing of the claimant beyond showing that the victim was a bona fide passenger. That last requirement is where most of these cases are actually fought, because the standard proof of it — the ticket — is a slip of paper in the pocket of someone who has just been gravely injured.
On 25 September 2026 a Bench of Justice Ujjal Bhuyan and Justice Atul S. Chandurkar, in a judgment delivered by Justice Chandurkar, restored an award that the Gujarat High Court had set aside on exactly that ground.
Twenty-seven September, and thirty-four days later
The appellants are the parents of Maheshbhai. On 27 September 2017 he was travelling to Surat via Ahmedabad in the general compartment of a train. On the claim as pleaded, there was heavy rush; he lost his balance on a sudden jerk and jolt somewhere between Sabarmati and Ahmedabad Railway Stations, and fell. He sustained multiple grievous injuries, was admitted to hospital, and after more than a month there, on 31 October 2017, he died.
His parents filed a claim application under Section 16 of the Railway Claims Tribunal Act, 1987 on 12 January 2018, annexing a communication of 13 November 2017 by which the Police Station Officer, G.R.P. Ahmedabad had directed an officer to take charge of the investigation into the accidental death.
The Railways denied the claim. Its written statement said the death was from a self-inflicted injury, that no ticket had been recovered from the victim, and that the claim application gave no material travel details. It relied on an investigation report dated 17 May 2018.
On 17 June 2022 the Railway Claims Tribunal allowed the claim. It held that Maheshbhai was the victim of an untoward incident and had suffered an accidental fall, and awarded ₹8 lakh with interest at 9% per annum from the date of the incident to the date of the order. It accepted that no ticket had been produced, but held that this by itself did not establish that he was an unauthorised passenger — there was a possibility of the ticket being lost.
The Union of India appealed under Section 23 of the 1987 Act. On 15 July 2025 a Single Judge of the Gujarat High Court allowed the appeal, holding that there was no evidence of a fall from the train and that the incident therefore could not be an “untoward incident” within Section 123(c)(2) of the Railways Act. The parents came to the Supreme Court.
What was pleaded, and what was asked in cross-examination
The Court began with the pleading, and quoted it. Paragraph 6(d) of the claim application stated that the deceased son’s railway travelling ticket, a handkerchief, a wrist watch, a pocket comb and cash of ₹800 to ₹900 were lost. The Railways denied those averments.
The father then examined himself. The Court described the tenor of his cross-examination as making interesting reading, and reproduced it. He said on oath that his son always purchased a ticket before travelling, which was why he had stated in his affidavit that the ticket had been purchased and lost. He accepted the suggestion put to him that his son had been travelling standing near the door of the compartment. And he said his son had no mobile phone.
The Railways examined two witnesses. An Assistant Sub-Inspector at Sabarmati Railway Station said he had received no information from any engine driver that someone had been struck by an engine; that he did not know which train the victim had fallen from and did not know about the incident; that he had only seen the victim injured under a bridge — and that he had not searched his pocket. The Station Superintendent said the incident was reported to him at 7.30 hours, that he attended the injured man and sent him to hospital by ambulance, that the victim was not in a position to speak, and that he had not checked his pocket for a ticket. He gave a memorandum the same day and made no investigation afterwards.
Those were the Railways’ two witnesses. Both conceded the one step that would have settled the question either way.
Where the burden sits
Mr. Nachiketa Joshi, Senior Advocate for the claimants, put the point of law as a question of burden: it having been specifically pleaded that the victim travelled on a valid ticket which was lost, the burden to prove that he was an unauthorised passenger lay on the Railways, and no material had been brought to disbelieve the claim. Mr. Kanakamedala Ravindra Kumar, Additional Solicitor General, supported the High Court — no travel details disclosed, no eyewitness examined, no ticket on the person of the victim, and the Superintendent’s evidence that there was no train movement at the relevant time, which he said rebutted the claimants’ case.
The Court applied Union of India v. Rina Devi, 2018 INSC 469, and set out paragraph 17.4 of it. The mere presence of a body on railway premises is not conclusive proof that the injured or deceased was a bona fide passenger. But the mere absence of a ticket will not negative the claim that he was. The initial burden is on the claimant, and it can be discharged by filing an affidavit of the relevant facts, after which the burden shifts to the Railways, with the issue to be decided on the facts shown or the attending circumstances, case by case.
Applied here, the sequence resolved itself. The specific pleading that the ticket and the other small possessions were lost, followed by the father’s deposition on oath that his son had purchased a ticket, discharged the initial burden. It was then for the Railways to rebut it, and the witnesses it called had not searched the victim’s pockets.
The Court added a consideration of ordinary human probability that the High Court had left out. The incident was on 27 September 2017 and left the victim with grievous injuries; he was hospitalised for more than a month before he died on 31 October. In the normal course, while a victim is undergoing medical treatment, it is quite unlikely that his railway ticket would have been preserved by his family.
On preponderance of probabilities, it held, the victim was a bona fide passenger, and the absence of recovery of his ticket could not defeat the claim. The High Court had given undue importance to the missing ticket without considering the father’s sworn statement or the month in hospital. The principle of strict liability flowing from Section 124-A, as held in Union of India v. Prabhakaran Vijaya Kumar, 2008 INSC 577, was clearly attracted.
The report that arrived seven months late
The Court then dealt with the document the High Court had relied on, and the chronology is the whole of the answer.
The claim application was filed on 12 January 2018. It was only after being served with notice of those proceedings that the authorities began the correspondence to have an investigation report prepared under Rule 6 of the Railway Passengers (Manner of Investigation of Untoward Incidents) Rules, 2003. The Sub-Divisional Magistrate (East), Ahmedabad forwarded the papers on 28 February 2018; the Ahmedabad Railway Police Station received them on 17 April 2018; and the report issued on 17 May 2018 — about seven months after the incident.
Rule 7 requires such an investigation to be completed immediately and the report submitted expeditiously. The delay could not be attributed to the claimants, and the Railways could not take advantage of its own delay. Following Kalandi Charan Sahoo v. General Manager, South-East Central Railways, Bilaspur, where the absence of an inquiry conducted immediately as the Rules require was held to be a factor against the Railways, and noting that no explanation for the delay appeared on record, the Court declined to rely on the report at all.
That mattered because the report was the only document supporting the theory of self-inflicted injury. Once it was set aside, the finding rested on the two witnesses who had not looked in the victim’s pockets.
The order
The High Court’s order of 15 July 2025 in R/First Appeal No. 4716 of 2022 was set aside and the Tribunal’s award of 17 June 2022 in O.A. No. 11 of 2018 restored. The Court directed that the award be satisfied by the Railways within thirty days. The appeal was allowed in those terms, with the parties left to bear their own costs.
What the judgment corrects is a habit rather than a rule. Rina Devi already placed the burden where this judgment places it, and the High Court did not purport to depart from it. What happened instead is that the absence of a ticket was treated as an absence of proof, when on the statutory scheme it is a gap the Railways must fill — by, for instance, checking the pockets of the injured man its own officers carried to an ambulance, or by conducting the Rule 6 inquiry when the Rules require it rather than after a claim is served. Neither was done here, and the Court declined to convert those omissions into a defence. The thirty-day direction suggests some impatience with a claim that took nine years to be allowed twice.