Imagine a passenger who falls from a moving train and is found injured beside the tracks. He cannot speak. Nobody searches his pockets. Weeks later he dies in hospital, and his family is told that because no ticket was found, he was not a passenger at all.
The Supreme Court has now addressed this scenario directly. The question was whether railway accident compensation can be denied merely because the deceased’s physical ticket was never recovered. Its answer, in a judgment by Atul S. Chandurkar J. (with Ujjal Bhuyan J.), is that non-recovery of the ticket cannot by itself defeat the claim, at least where the claimants have discharged their initial burden and the Railways have not rebutted it.
The Ticket That Was Never Found
On 27 September 2017, Maheshbhai was travelling to Surat via Ahmedabad in the general compartment of a train. He fell between Sabarmati and Ahmedabad stations and suffered multiple grievous injuries. He was hospitalised for more than a month and died on 31 October 2017.
His parents filed a claim under Section 16 of the Railway Claims Tribunal Act, 1987. They alleged that he was travelling on a valid ticket, which had been lost. Notably, they did not plead the loss of the ticket alone. Paragraph 6(d) of the claim application stated that a handkerchief, a wristwatch, a pocket comb and cash of ₹800 to ₹900 were also lost. The Railways denied these averments in their written statement.
This pleading matters. A claim that only the one document proving entitlement went missing invites suspicion. A claim that the ticket disappeared along with the ordinary contents of a young man’s pockets is consistent with a person who was injured, moved and hospitalised.
What the Father Said and What the Railways Did Not Check
The father, Sukhabhai Nanjibhai Makwana, filed an affidavit and was cross-examined. He said his son was unmarried and travelling alone, and that the son had no mobile phone. He accepted the Railways’ suggestion that his son was standing near the door of the compartment. On the central point, he stated on oath that his son “used to always purchase the ticket before travelling” and that this was why he had stated in his affidavit that a ticket had been purchased and lost.
The cross-examination did not shake him. It also showed something the Court plainly found telling: the Railways’ own witnesses had not looked for the ticket.
The Railways examined two witnesses. The first was an Assistant Sub-Inspector at Sabarmati station. He did not know which train the victim had fallen from, had seen him only in an injured condition under a bridge, and had not searched his pocket. The second was the Station Superintendent. The incident was reported to him at 7:30 hrs, and he sent the injured man to hospital by ambulance. He said the victim could not speak and that he had not checked the pockets for a ticket. Though he issued a memorandum the same day, he made no investigation afterwards.
The Court’s reasoning rests on this asymmetry. The Railways relied on the absence of a ticket “on the person of the victim”, but the only officials who saw him at the scene had not checked whether one was there.
Rina Devi: A Two-Stage Approach to the Burden of Proof
The legal foundation of the decision is Union of India v. Rina Devi, 2018 INSC 469. The Court noted that Rina Devi holds that mere absence of a ticket with the victim does not negate a claim that he was a bona fide passenger. Paragraph 17.4 of that decision, reproduced in the judgment, sets out a sequence:
- The initial burden lies on the claimant, who can discharge it by filing an affidavit of the relevant facts.
- The burden then shifts to the Railways.
- The issue is decided on the facts shown or the attending circumstances, case by case.
It is equally important to note what this does not say. Rina Devi itself states that the mere presence of a body on railway premises is not conclusive proof that the injured or deceased was a bona fide passenger. Nothing in the present judgment changes that. The Supreme Court did not hold that everyone found injured or dead on railway premises is automatically a bona fide passenger, or that a ticket is never necessary. The narrower principle is that the absence of a ticket does not, by itself, negate bona fide passenger status.
In this case, the Court held that the father’s sworn statement discharged the initial burden. He deposed that his son had purchased a ticket for the journey, and that evidence was supported by the specific pleading of the ticket and other belongings being lost. The onus then shifted to the Railways.
The Court found they had failed to discharge it: they denied the claim but produced nothing that displaced the father’s testimony, and their two witnesses conceded that they had not checked the victim’s pockets.
Reading the Evidence on a Preponderance of Probabilities
The Court did not require the claimants to prove bona fide travel with certainty. It asked which version was more probable on the whole record. Several strands pointed the same way.
The sworn testimony. The father’s evidence on oath was unshaken and was the only direct evidence on whether a ticket had been bought.
The pleaded loss. The claim specified the ticket along with a handkerchief, wristwatch, comb and cash. That is a coherent account of a person’s belongings going missing after a serious accident.
The Railway officials’ failure to search. Both officials who dealt with the injured victim admitted they had not checked his pockets. The Railways could not rely on the absence of a ticket that they never looked for.
The injuries and hospitalisation. The Court observed that the victim was hospitalised for over a month, and that “in normal course” it was “quite unlikely that the railway ticket would have been preserved by the claimants” while he was undergoing treatment. This explains why the family could not produce the ticket later.
The absence of rebuttal. The Railways had contended that the victim’s injury was self-inflicted. The Court’s reasoning proceeds on the footing that they failed to discharge the burden that had shifted to them, and the judgment does not accept the self-inflicted-injury theory.
Weighing these together, the Court concluded as follows:
“The High Court gave undue importance to the absence of the railway ticket without taking into consideration the statement made on oath by the victim’s father and the fact that the victim had been hospitalised for a period of more than one month. On preponderance of probabilities, it can be concluded that the victim was a bona fide passenger and that absence of recovery of his ticket cannot result in defeating the claim for compensation.”
The passage does two things.
- It identifies the High Court’s error as one of weighting rather than of law: the missing ticket was treated as decisive when it was only one circumstance, and the sworn evidence and the hospitalisation were left out of the assessment.
- It fixes the standard. The finding is expressed as a conclusion on a preponderance of probabilities, not proof beyond doubt. The final clause is also carefully limited. The absence of recovery of the ticket cannot “result in defeating” the claim, which is different from saying the ticket is irrelevant.
Three Forums, Three Readings of the Same Record
The Railway Claims Tribunal accepted the claimants’ evidence and held Maheshbhai to be a bona fide passenger who died in an untoward incident. It noted that no ticket had been produced but reasoned that this alone did not establish that he was unauthorised, since the ticket could well have been lost in such circumstances. On 17 June 2022 it awarded ₹8 lakh with interest at 9% per annum from the date of the incident until the date of the order.
A learned Single Judge of the Gujarat High Court reversed this on 15 July 2025. The High Court held there was no evidence of the victim’s fall from the train, so the incident could not be called an “untoward incident” under Section 123(c)(2) of the Railways Act, 1989.
According to the Supreme Court’s account, the reversal rested principally on two grounds: that the details of the train had not been disclosed, and that no ticket was found with the victim. The High Court also relied on the Railways’ report dated 17 May 2018. The Additional Solicitor General, defending that order, added that no eyewitness had been examined and that the Station Superintendent had said no train was moving at the relevant time.
The Supreme Court found that the High Court had given undue importance to the missing ticket. In its view, the High Court did not weigh the father’s sworn evidence or the prolonged hospitalisation. It also treated the Railways’ report as an obstacle to the claim, a report the Supreme Court chose to disregard for the reasons below.
The difference between the forums was therefore not a difference over the law in Rina Devi. It was a difference in how the evidence was weighed. The Tribunal read the record as a whole; the High Court gave decisive weight to what was absent; and the Supreme Court restored the holistic reading.
A Seven-Month-Late Investigation Could Not Rescue the Railways’ Case
The Railways sought to rely on an investigation report dated 17 May 2018. The Supreme Court’s treatment of that report is a separate strand of the judgment.
The timeline in the judgment is as follows:
- 27 September 2017: the accident.
- 12 January 2018: the claimants file their claim application.
- 28 February 2018: the Sub-Divisional Magistrate (East), Ahmedabad, forwards the papers for a report under Rule 6 of the Railway Passengers (Manner of Investigation of Untoward Incidents) Rules, 2003.
- 17 April 2018: the papers are received by the Ahmedabad Railway Police Station.
- 17 May 2018: the report is submitted, about seven months after the incident.
The Court observed that it was only after being served with notice of the claim proceedings that the authorities began communicating to have the report prepared. The claimants filed their claim on 12 January 2018, and the steps toward a report followed that filing. The Court held that the delay “could not be attributed to the claimants” and that the Railways “cannot seek to take advantage of the delay on their part.”
The Court relied on Kalandi Charan Sahoo & Another v. General Manager, South-East Central Railways, Bilaspur (Civil Appeal No. 5608 of 2017, decided 25 April 2017), in which the absence of an inquiry conducted immediately, as the Rules of 2003 require, was treated as a factor against the Railways. Counsel for the claimants had pointed out that Rule 7 requires the investigation to be completed immediately and the report submitted expeditiously. The Railways offered no explanation for the delay, and the Court was “inclined to ignore” the report. As a result, it could not come in the way of the claim.
The reasoning is measured. The Court did not find bad faith. It held that a party cannot benefit from a delay that is its own, and that the claimants, who had no control over the timing of the Railways’ inquiry, should not bear its consequences.
Strict Liability Follows the Finding
Once the Court accepted, on the evidence, that Maheshbhai was a bona fide passenger who had suffered an untoward incident, it held that the principle of “strict liability” flowing from Section 124-A of the Railways Act, 1989 was “clearly attracted.” It relied for this on Union of India v. Prabhakaran Vijaya Kumar & Others, 2008 INSC 577.
The sequence matters. Strict liability is not a substitute for proving bona fide travel; it is what applies after that threshold is crossed. The evidentiary contest in this case, therefore, was about the passenger’s status. Once the claimants prevailed on that, liability followed under Section 124-A without a further inquiry into fault, and the Court concluded that the Tribunal had rightly granted compensation under that provision.
Final Decision
The Supreme Court allowed the appeal and:
- set aside the Gujarat High Court’s order of 15 July 2025 in R/First Appeal No. 4716 of 2022;
- restored the Tribunal’s award of 17 June 2022 in O.A. No. 11 of 2018, which means compensation of ₹8 lakh with interest at 9% per annum from the date of the incident until the date of the award; and
- directed the Railways to satisfy the award within thirty days.
The parties were left to bear their own costs.
Conclusion: Where the Court Drew the Line
The judgment balances two positions. A claimant must still establish the foundational facts showing bona fide travel, and the Court reaffirms that presence on railway premises alone does not do this. But once that initial burden is discharged, here through the father’s sworn evidence supported by a specific pleading, the burden shifts to the Railways. A missing physical ticket cannot then be treated as conclusive proof against the passenger.
In practical terms, railway compensation claims must be decided on the entire evidentiary picture. That picture includes what the claimants say on oath, what the Railways’ officials did and did not do at the scene, the nature of the injuries, the time spent in hospital and the reliability of any Railway inquiry. The ticket remains relevant evidence, but on these facts it was not enough to defeat the claim.