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Anil Kumar Gupta v. Union of India and Ors.

Writ Petition (Civil) · Neutral citation not assigned (Writ Petition (Civil) No. 68 of 2011)Decided 5 Jul 2016
Writ Petition (Civil) No. 68 of 2011
Chief Justice T.S. Thakur · Justice Uday Umesh Lalit

Background

On 1 February 2011, over two lakh candidates gathered at Bareilly, U.P. for an Indo-Tibetan Border Police recruitment drive for only 416 posts; the overwhelming crowd forced officials to suspend the drive, triggering protests, a lathi charge, and chaos. Thousands of young aspirants then packed onto the roofs of a passing train, the Himgiri Express, to get home, and as the train passed under a low railway-over-bridge near Shahjahanpur at speed, at least 14 men on the roof were crushed to death and 20 others seriously injured. A practising advocate filed this PIL seeking an inquiry into the cause of the deaths, compensation for victims, and guidelines to prevent recurrence; during the case the Railway Administration's own safety inquiry report was placed before the Court.

Decision Breakdown

Relying on precedents on vicarious liability and the state's "duty of care" (including Chandrima Das and M.S. Grewal v. Deep Chand Sood), the Court held that although the roof-top travellers themselves contributed to the mishap by their own risky conduct, the Railway Administration was not free from blame for running the train at speed (about 75 kmph) with a known low-clearance bridge ahead and a huge number of people riding on top. It directed the Railway Administration to pay graded compensation: Rs. 5 lakh for each death, Rs. 1.5 lakh for permanent disability, Rs. 75,000 for grievous injury, and Rs. 25,000 for simple injury. It further directed the Railways to constitute a technical committee within four weeks to survey and remove dangerous low-clearance infringements nationwide (not just in the Lucknow Division where the accident occurred) within two years, file six-monthly compliance reports to the Court, and directed Central Police Organisations to cap the number of recruitment candidates called per day (around 600) to avoid repeat stampede-type situations. The petition was disposed of with these directions.

Lesson Learnt

When a government body's operational negligence, here, running an overcrowded train at speed past a known low bridge, combines with the public's own risky behaviour to cause deaths, courts can still hold the state liable for compensation and order systemic safety fixes (infrastructure audits, crowd-management caps) rather than treating it as purely the victims' own fault.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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