Tek Chand & Anr. vs. Union of India
Background
A young man traveled by train to another city looking for work, called his father to say he had found nothing and was returning home, and was later found dead near railway tracks. Only his onward-journey ticket was recovered from his body: no return ticket was found, since the family claimed he never had the chance to buy one before boarding the return train. The Railway Claims Tribunal dismissed his parents' compensation claim, reasoning there was no eyewitness, no return ticket, and that railway train-timing records seemed to place the relevant train at that location a few minutes after his body had already been discovered, which the Tribunal treated as proof he could not have fallen from that particular train.
Decision Breakdown
The High Court held that non-recovery of a return ticket does not, by itself, disprove that someone was genuinely traveling, particularly here where the father's testimony about the phone call, the verified onward ticket, and the lack of any contrary explanation for why the body was found near the tracks all supported the family's version. Crucially, the Court found the Tribunal had misread the train's official movement log: the same train had actually passed through that stretch of track twice, once heading out and, after reaching its terminus and immediately turning back ("a return loop"), once again heading back, and the Tribunal had only looked at the second, later pass while ignoring the earlier one, which lined up far better with when the body was discovered. The case was sent back to the Tribunal to award compensation.
Lesson Learnt
Railway claims tribunals must carefully trace a train's entire route and timing, including any "return loop" where it passes the same spot more than once, rather than picking a single timestamp that happens to look inconvenient for the claimant's version of events.