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Ramvati & Anr. vs. Union of India

First Appeal from Order · 2026:DHC:7979Decided 17 Sept 2026New Delhi Bench
FAO 42/2023CNR: DLHC010056612023
Justice Manoj Kumar Ohri

Background

The wife and family of a man who died after falling from a moving train (the Purushottam Express) sought compensation from the Railways, claiming he was a genuine, ticketed passenger who fell accidentally. The Railway Claims Tribunal rejected their claim, reasoning that his actual ticket wasn't recovered from his body (only an old, unrelated ticket was found) and that his injuries suggested he may have been a trespasser run over by the train rather than someone who fell from it.

Decision Breakdown

The High Court reversed the Tribunal's decision. It held that under settled Supreme Court law, the mere absence of a recovered ticket does not disprove that someone was a bona fide passenger: the family's witnesses (the wife and stepson) had given consistent, unchallenged testimony that the deceased had purchased a ticket and was travelling by that train. The Court also noted a contemporaneous Station Master's memo recording that the man had "fallen from" the train, which the Railways could not explain away, and found the post-incident DRM report (filed much later and never proven through a witness) insufficient to establish he was a trespasser. The case was sent back to the Tribunal to calculate and pay compensation.

Lesson Learnt

Losing a physical train ticket does not disqualify a deceased or injured person's family from railway accident compensation: courts will look at the whole picture of evidence, including contemporaneous railway records, rather than treating a missing ticket as fatal to the claim.

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