THE CASE OF THE PASSENGER ON THE PLATFORM
" On 4 March 2007, Durai Somanathan bought tickets at Dindigul Station in Tamilnadu for a 200-km trip to Kumbakonam with his wife Elambal and daughter Bhanumathi. The family boarded a train and began settling in, but at departure time they got a shock - they were on the wrong train!
Durai managed to alight, but as the train accelerated out of the station, his wife and daughter could not. Durai ran alongside the train, shouting for his wife and daughter to get off. Just...
more... then the middle-aged man collapsed and died. The post-mortem revealed cardiac arrest and identified the death as from " natural causes ".
But the grieving family filed a claim with the Railway Claims Tribunal for a modest '4 lakh. On 21 July 2009, the Tribunal dismissed the claim, maintaining that although Durai Somanathan was a bona fide passenger, his case did not fall into the " untoward incident " provision under Section 123 of the Railway Act, which would have made Southern Railway liable to pay compensation. The Somanathans then moved the High Court.
Was the Railway Claims Tribunal right in dismissing the case? Would Southern Railways be held liable for Somanathan's death? YOU BE THE JUDGE.