IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT PATNA MA No.178 of 2009 SIKANDAR ROY Versus THE UNION OF INDIA ----------- 2. 23.4.2009 Heard Counsel for the appellant. A claim in terms of Section 123 read with Section 125 of the Railways Act, 1989 was filed on 26.7.1999 and in the period of almost ten years the petitioner-appellant did not adduce any evidence either documentary or oral so as to support his claim petition which was only accompanying postmortem report, first information report and documents with regard to identity of the deceased. The Tribunal, accordingly, has held that the appellant did not take any effective steps for proving his case. The Tribunal has further noted that when after repeated indulgence no oral or documentary evidence was adduced on behalf of the appellant, the Tribunal had closed the evidence but the said order was also not assailed before any court and that order was also allowed to become final. The Tribunal therefore having held that initial onus of burden of proof for establishing the claim was not at all discharged by the appellant had rejected the claim of the petitioner-appellant. Counsel initially submits that it was not incumbent on the appellant-claimant to prove his case rather a judgment of this Court in the case of Smt. Akhtari Begum vs. Union of India reported in 2008(1) PLJR 627 would go to show that such burden was on the Railway Administration. 2 This Court having considered the ratio of Akhtari Begum case (Supra) would find that the reliance placed by the learned Counsel seems to be wholly misplaced. As a matter of fact, in that case on one of the issue after leading of the evidence when the appellant therein took a plea that the railway ticket was not available with the dead body of the deceased and the Tribunal had non-suited the case of the appellant on that ground alone, this court following the ratio of a judgment of Rajasthan High Court in the case of Union of India v. Hari Narayan Gupta & anr. Reported in AIR 2007 Rajasthan 38 had held that the benefit of travelling as railway passenger could not be disallowed only because of non-production of a railway ticket inasmuch as this benefit still would remain there because he was never traveling without ticket. In that context the Rajasthan High Court has held that the burden of proving the fact that the deceased was not a bonafide passenger would lie on the Railway Administration. Even after applying the said ratio of Akhtari Begum in the present case, it would be difficult to accept the submission of the Counsel for the appellant as a blank proposition of law that the claimant-appellant will not be required to prove his claim and that it was the bounden duty of the Tribunal to allow such claim. Only because the claimant had produced a claim petition and documents, such documents by itself could not have treated as evidence unless they were tendered in evidence. Filing of such documents with the claim 3 petition in fact would only go to satisfy the first part of the requirement of presenting the claim in the manner as prescribed. The claimant thereafter, with whatsoever legal evidence that may be in his possession will still have to lead evidence in support of such claim. Therefore it cannot be contended that mere filing of claim would be sufficient for allowing the claim. In this case it would be found that after filing of the claim petition nothing was done by the claimant-appellant as has been noted at length in the impugned order. In that view of the matter, the conclusion arrived at by the Tribunal while rejecting the claim of the appellant cannot be held to be illegal. Counsel then would submit that the provision of compensation under Section 123 of the Railways Act is a beneficial piece of legislation and therefore this court even after noticing the discrepancy on the part of the appellant should remit the matter back for allowing the appellant to lead evidence. In this context he would refer to the judgment of the Apex Court in the case of Union of India vs. Prabhakaran Vijay Kumar reported in 2008(4) PLJR 40 (S.C). This court would however fail to understand as to how the ratio of the aforementioned judgment of the Apex Court can be made applicable in the facts of the present case. There is no denial of this fact that appellant after filing his claim petition had led no evidence and therefore his case cannot be treated similar with Prabhakaran’s case (Supra) which has only 4 decided the issue of adjudication in this case of victim falling down from the running train and such occurrence to be covered by the expression “untoward incident”. In fact in the aforesaid case before the Apex Court there was no similar situation as in the present case inasmuch as there was no lack of evidence on the crucial issue including the one relating to falling of the deceased from train. That case involved the pure and simple interpretation of “untoward incident” with regard to particular type of accident and the strict interpretation of accident as given by the Tribunal was not accepted. In this case there is no such issue involved right now because here there is no evidence whatsoever either documentary or oral. That being so, this court would find no merit in this appeal and it is dismissed accordingly. Narendra/ ( Mihir Kumar Jha, J. )