Ahmedabad: Gujarat High Court has ordered the railways to pay Rs 8 lakh compensation to a woman whose son died after falling from a running train. Her claim was denied by railway tribunal on the grounds that he was travelling without a ticket.The fall took place in Aug 2021, when Razaulla Shaikh was travelling in a general compartment from Ajmer to Mumbai. He fell from the running train between Abu and Palanpur. Shaikh’s mother, a widow, sought compensation. However, the railways refused, saying that a ticket was not found on his body and that he fell due to dizziness as he was standing near the door.The tribunal rejected her claim in June 2024, and she appealed to the high court. Her advocate, Rathin Raval, argued that she had stated in an affidavit that Shaikh had a valid ticket and the railway authorities had nothing to prove her wrong.After the hearing, the court said that the tribunal failed to understand the purpose of Railways Act. “The tribunal committed a serious error in rejecting the claim on a hyper-technical approach, thereby defeating the very object of a beneficial piece of legislation. What is all the more noticeable is that the incident occurred during the Covid-19 pandemic period, during which period railway authorities generally did not conduct ticket-checking for passengers boarding trains (sic),” the court said.
