1. The present appeal arises from the judgment dated 06.11.2019 passed by the Railway Claims Tribunal, Bhubaneswar Bench, whereby the claim application filed by the appellants seeking statutory compensation for the death of Pravakar Behera was dismissed. The scope of interference in an appeal under Section 23 of the Railway Claims Tribunal Act is undoubtedly circumscribed and ordinarily confined to substantial questions of law. However, it is equally well settled that where findings of fact are vitiated by misapplication of legal principles, disregard of material evidence, or reliance on legally untenable considerations, such findings assume the character of perversity warranting appellate correction.

I. FACTUAL MATRIX OF THE CASE:

2. On 08.03.2016, while the deceased, Pravakar Behera, was travelling from Balasore to Soro by Train No. 5829 (Balasore-Bhadrak passenger train), accidentally fell from the train at Soro Railway Station and sustained grievous injuries and was shifted to Soro C.H.C where he died during treatment. Consequently, UD Case No. 18/2016 was registered, and a post-mortem was conducted on 09.03.2016.

3. Subsequently, the Applicants instituted a claim application before the learned Railway Claims Tribunal, Bhubaneswar Bench, registered as O.A. No. 91 of 2016, seeking statutory compensation of ₹8,00,000/- (Rupees Eight Lakhs) on account of the death of Pravakar Behera. It was stated therein that the said accident was a caused due to push and pull of co-passengers and was an “untoward incident” within the meaning of Section 123(c)(2) read with Section 124-A of the Railways Act, 1989.

4. The learned Railway Claims Tribunal, Bhubaneswar, by its judgment dated 06.11.2019, dismissed the said claim application. The Tribunal relied on the DRM’S report and held that the deceased was not a bona fide passenger of the train and further held that the cause of death is not due to an untoward incident.

5. Being dissatisfied and aggrieved by the judgment dated 06.11.2019 passed in O.A. No. 91 of 2016, the Applicants have preferred the present appeal before the High Court of Orissa at Cuttack, calling in question the legality, propriety, and correctness of the findings recorded by the learned Tribunal.

II. SUBMISSIONS ON BEHALF OF THE APPELLANT:

6. Learned counsel for the Appellants earnestly made the following submissions in support of his contentions, as borne out from the Written Note of Submissions:

                  i)        The learned Tribunal has dismissed the appellants' claim for compensation solely on a vague and flimsy ground that the appellants have failed to prove that the deceased was a bona fide passenger as no journey ticket was recovered from the possession of the deceased at the time of the inquest and has relied solely on the DRM report, which was prepared years after the occurrence.

                  ii)       It is pertinent to mention that the learned tribunal has completely discarded the oral evidence adduced by the A.W.2, who happens to be an eye-witness to the purchasing of a ticket by the deceased. A.W.2 has deposed that on the same day, he was also travelling in the said train from Balasore to Soro, and had seen the deceased purchasing a ticket and travelling on the same train.

                  iii)       The learned Tribunal has also discarded the documentary evidence adduced by the appellants. The police papers in connection with the accident, i.e., the inquest report, final report, P.M. report, etc., are of utmost importance in accident cases as the same are prepared immediately after the accident. But instead of relying on the police papers, the learned Tribunal has solely relied on the DRM Report filed by the Respondents which was prepared more than one year after the accident. Hence, such reliance on a report prepared after a long time instead of the one's prepared immediately cannot be sustained in the eyes of law.

                  iv)      The appellant has relied on the judgement of Doli Rani Saha v. Union Of India (2024) 9 SCC 656 to submit that the mere absence of a journey ticket would not negate the claim that the deceased was a bona fide passenger if other factors are in their favour.

                  v)       In view of the above, the impugned judgment and order dated 06.11.2019 passed in O.A. No. 91 of 2016 by the Railway Claims Tribunal, Bhubaneswar, is not sustainable. Therefore, the Learned Counsel on behalf of the Appellants prayed that this Hon’ble Court may be pleased to set aside the said order and allow the claim application, granting compensation in accordance with law.

III. SUBMISSIONS ON BEHALF OF THE RESPONDENT:

7. On the contrary, the Learned Counsel for the Respondent made the following submissions:

                  i)        The learned counsel for the Respondents put forward that an appeal under Section 23 lies only on a substantial question of law. Interference with findings of fact is permissible only when such findings are perverse. Reliance is placed on Union of India v. Rina Devi, (2019) 3 SCC 572.

                  ii)       The appellant failed to produce a valid journey ticket or any credible witness to prove that the deceased was a bona fide passenger, and even the D.R.M report and inquiry report conducted by the Officer/RPF do not conclusively support the claim of accidental fall from the train.

                  iii)       The burden of proving an untoward incident and bona fide passenger status lies squarely on the claimants, as reiterated in Union of India v. Prabhakaran Vijaya Kumar, (2008) 9 SCC 527, which burden remains undischarged.

                  iv)      That, the applicants have failed to establish that the deceased was travelling in a train carrying passengers and the deceased died in an untoward incident as defined u/s 123(c)(2) of the Railways Act, 1989.

                  v)       Lastly, the respondents stated that the Railways Act, though beneficial legislation, does not intend to grant compensation on speculative claims. Liberal interpretation cannot amount to blind construction that is not supported by facts or evidence. The learned Tribunal correctly appreciated the evidence on record, and the claimants having failed to discharge the statutory burden of proof, the impugned order dated 06.11.2016 should be upheld by this Court.

IV.    Findings Of The Tribunal:

8. The Learned Tribunal examined the evidence filed by the applicant, including the memo, inquest report, post-mortem report, and affidavits of AW-1 and AW-2. AW-1 admitted she was not an eyewitness to the deceased purchasing a ticket or boarding the train, and her testimony was based only on what she heard from others. AW-2 claimed to have seen the deceased buying a ticket, but his name was not mentioned in the claim application or supporting documents, and he produced no proof of his presence at Balasore Railway Station. This contradiction created doubt about his reliability.

9. The Tribunal noted that although the claimants stated the deceased was working as a porter at Balasore Railway Station, the Station Master’s certificate confirmed there was no official record of him being a railway porter. Importantly, no ticket was recovered from the deceased. The statutory inquiry report and train service records showed the train’s timings but did not support the claim that the deceased was a bona fide passenger. The respondent also argued that the inquest witnesses were not eyewitnesses, and the court agreed that such documents were not conclusive proof of an untoward incident.

10. On the issue of bona fide travel, the court held that the applicant failed to produce any cogent evidence that the deceased had purchased a ticket or boarded the train. AW-2’s testimony was unreliable, and no documentary proof supported his claim. In the absence of trustworthy evidence, the court accepted the DRM’s report that no ticket was recovered and that the deceased was not a bona fide passenger. Under Section 191 of the Railways Act, entries in railway records cannot be brushed aside unless proved wrong, and here no such proof was offered.

11. The tribunal concluded that the deceased was not a bona fide passenger on the train that day. Under Section 124-A of the Railways Act, compensation can only be awarded if the deceased was travelling as a bona fide passenger. Referring to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Union of India v. Reena Devi, the court emphasized that the initial burden lies on the claimants to prove ticket purchase and travel, which they failed to discharge.

12. Thus, the tribunal dismissed the claim, finding that the deceased was not a bona fide passenger and had not died in an untoward incident under the Act.

V. THIS COURT’S JUDGMENT AND ANALYSIS:

13. The present appeal arises from the judgment dated 06.11.2019 passed by the Railway Claims Tribunal, Bhubaneswar Bench, whereby the claim application filed by the appellants seeking statutory compensation for the death of Pravakar Behera was dismissed. The scope of interference in an appeal under Section 23 of the Railway Claims Tribunal Act is undoubtedly circumscribed and ordinarily confined to substantial questions of law. However, it is equally well settled that where findings of fact are vitiated by misapplication of legal principles, disregard of material evidence, or reliance on legally untenable considerations, such findings assume the character of perversity warranting appellate correction.

14. The foundational questions that arise for determination are: (i) whether the deceased was a bona fide passenger, and (ii) whether the death occurred due to an “untoward incident” within the meaning of Section 123(c)(2) read with Section 124-A of the Railways Act, 1989. These two ingredients are conjunctive and must co-exist for fastening statutory liability upon the Railways.

15. On the aspect of bona fide passenger status, the Tribunal has proceeded primarily on the premise that no journey ticket was recovered from the person of the deceased and that the oral testimony of A.W.2 was unreliable. While it is correct that the initial burden lies on the claimants to establish that the deceased was travelling with a valid authority to travel, the nature of such burden in proceedings under the Railways Act has been consistently held to be one of preponderance of probabilities and not proof beyond reasonable doubt. The Act being a piece of social welfare legislation, the standard of proof cannot be elevated to a level which would render genuine claims illusory.

16. The Tribunal appears to have rejected the testimony of A.W.2 on the ground that his name did not figure in the claim application and that he produced no documentary proof of his presence at the railway station. Such an approach, in the considered opinion of this Court, is overly technical. In claims arising out of railway accidents, especially involving passengers of modest means travelling by passenger trains, it is unrealistic to expect contemporaneous documentary corroboration for the presence of a co-passenger or eyewitness. The omission to name A.W.2 in the claim application may affect the weight of his testimony, but cannot, by itself, justify its outright rejection, particularly when his evidence is consistent with the pleaded case and not shown to be inherently improbable.

17. Equally significant is the Tribunal’s approach in discarding the police records such as the inquest report, final report, and post-mortem report. These documents were prepared contemporaneously, in the ordinary course of official duty, immediately following the incident. They consistently record that the deceased sustained injuries due to a fall at Soro Railway Station and succumbed during treatment. While it is true that such documents are not conclusive proof of an untoward incident, they constitute strong corroborative material which cannot be brushed aside in favour of a DRM report prepared long after the occurrence, unless compelling reasons are recorded.

18. The DRM report, relied upon heavily by the Tribunal, was admittedly prepared more than a year after the incident. Such reports, though relevant, are essentially internal fact-finding exercises based on secondary information and cannot be accorded primacy over contemporaneous police records and oral evidence unless the latter are demonstrably unreliable. The Tribunal’s reasoning appears to invert this evidentiary hierarchy by treating the DRM report as determinative and the police records as inconsequential, which approach does not accord with settled principles governing appreciation of evidence in accident compensation cases.

19. On the issue of non-recovery of the ticket, this Court finds substance in the appellants’ contention that mere absence of a journey ticket is not decisive. It is a matter of common experience that in cases of accidental fall, tickets may be lost, destroyed, or otherwise not traceable. The law does not require proof of ticket recovery as an inflexible rule. Once the claimants place material to probabilise lawful travel, the evidentiary burden shifts to the Railways to establish the contrary. In the present case, beyond asserting non-recovery of the ticket and relying on the DRM report, no substantive evidence has been adduced by the Railways to affirmatively establish that the deceased was travelling unauthorisedly.

20. As regards the occurrence itself, the Tribunal’s conclusion that the death was not the result of an untoward incident appears unsustainable. The consistent version emerging from the pleadings, police papers, and medical evidence is that the deceased fell at the railway station while the train was in the course of its journey. A fall from a train or at a railway station while boarding or alighting squarely falls within the statutory definition of an “untoward incident” under Section 123(c)(2), unless the case is brought within one of the exceptions enumerated in the proviso to Section 124-A. No material has been placed on record by the Railways to suggest that the case falls under any such exception such as suicide, self-inflicted injury, or criminal act.

21. The Tribunal’s reliance on the principle that entries in railway records carry statutory presumption under Section 191 of the Railways Act is also misplaced in the facts of the present case. Such presumption is rebuttable and cannot override other admissible evidence on record. Here, the claimants have led oral and documentary evidence sufficient to raise a credible presumption of bona fide travel and accidental fall, which the Railways have failed to effectively rebut.

22. In view of the foregoing discussion, this Court is of the considered opinion that the findings recorded by the Tribunal suffer from misapplication of legal principles governing burden of proof, undue reliance on a delayed DRM report, and improper rejection of material evidence. These errors go to the root of the matter and render the impugned judgment legally unsustainable.

23. Consequently, this Court holds that the deceased, Pravakar Behera, was a bona fide passenger and that his death occurred due to an untoward incident within the meaning of Sections 123(c)(2) and 124-A of the Railways Act, 1989. The appellants are, therefore, entitled to statutory compensation in accordance with law.

24. The appeal is accordingly allowed. The judgment dated 06.11.2019 passed by the Railway Claims Tribunal, Bhubaneswar Bench, in O.A. No. 91 of 2016 is set aside, and the claim application stands allowed. The respondents shall pay to the appellants the statutory compensation as applicable on the date of the accident, together with interest at the rate prescribed under the rules, within the stipulated period. The appeal is accordingly allowed.

VI. CONCLUSION:

25. The judgment and order dated 06.11.2019 passed by the learned Railway Claims Tribunal, Bhubaneswar Bench, in O.A. No. 91 of 2016 are hereby set aside.

26. It is held that the death of Pravakar Behera occurred in an “untoward incident” within the meaning of Section 123(c)(2) read with Section 124- A of the Railways Act, 1989, and that the deceased was a bona fide passenger at the relevant time.

27. The appellants–claimants are held entitled to statutory compensation as admissible under the Railways Act and the Railway Accidents and Untoward Incidents (Compensation) Rules, as applicable on the date of the accident.

28. Accordingly, the respondent–Railways are directed to pay a sum of ₹8,00,000/- (Rupees Eight Lakhs only) to the appellants towards compensation, together with interest at the rate of 6% per annum from the date of filing of the claim application till the date of actual payment.

29. The Tribunal is directed to release 50% of the awarded amount to the Appellants proportionately by way of account transfer or cheque and the rest of the amount to be kept in an interest bearing fixed deposit account for a period of three years or subject to the order of the Tribunal.

30. The aforesaid amount shall be released and disbursed in favour of the appellants in accordance with law, within a period of three months from the date of receipt of a certified copy of this judgment, failing which the amount shall carry interest at the rate of 9% per annum for the period of default.

31.    There shall be no order as to costs.