📌 West Bengal resident Biswajit Mondal received ex gratia payment of Rs 50,000 from the Railways after suffering injuries in his lower back in the devastating train accident last year at Balasore in which 297 others were killed and over 800 injured. He approached the Railway Claims Tribunal (RCT) in Bhubaneswar seeking additional relief of Rs 8 lakh for the injuries, and “pain and suffering”. He was awarded Rs 50,000 for the injuries, but his claim for “pain and suffering” was rejected. 📌 Tamil Nadu resident K S Sundaram was awarded an additional Rs 25,000 by the Chennai RCT for injuries sustained in the accident, above the Railway ex gratia of Rs 50,000 — and Rs 5,000 for “pain and suffering”. “It is considered reasonable to award Rs 25,000 for the injuries sustained and Rs 5,000 for the pain and suffering undergone by him,” stated the tribunal order dated September 29, 2023. These are two of the several cases in which varying amounts were awarded as additional compensation by different RCTs for similar injuries or trauma in one of the worst train accidents in the country's history. Reason: The health conditions listed by the applicants were not covered by the Railway Accidents and Untoward Incidents (Compensation) Amendment Rules — a 34-year-old law, last amended in 2016, under which such relief is decided, according to an investigation by The Indian Express of records obtained under the Right To Information (RTI) Act. In a nutshell, this means that any loss or trauma that falls outside the injuries or disabilities specified in the law leaves room for different interpretations by the six tribunals hearing the cases in Kolkata, Bhubaneswar, Ranchi, Patna, Chennai and Bhopal. These tribunals, set up under the Railway Claims Tribunal Act, 1987, are for speedy adjudication of claims and expeditious payment of compensation to the victims of rail accidents and to those whose goods are lost or damaged in rail-transit. For “non-scheduled” injuries, the maximum amount RCTs can award is Rs 1.6 lakh. The law specifies about 40 injuries - ranging from fractures to amputation - and the compensation that should be awarded for them in rail accidents. But case records from Balasore show that complaints ranging from symptoms of post traumatic stress disorders (PTSD), such as mental trauma and “flashbacks”, to physical pain are not covered. In many of these cases, the RCT judges granted what they felt was “reasonable” compensation in the “interest of justice”. The records reflect this variation: Of the two tribunal benches that heard the most pleas, Kolkata (553 cases) handed out an average payout per person of Rs 53,670 for injuries and Bhubaneswar (202 cases) Rs 1.06 lakh in the same category (see chart). On Saturday, The Indian Express reported that for the 1,102 people who were either injured or died in the accident, about 841 claims were filed for additional relief before RCTs. Of these, at least 450 cases of injuries did not qualify under the compensation law, accounting for close to 70 per cent of such cases that were heard by RCT benches. Said senior Railway Ministry official: "Going to the RCT is routine and due process. The Railways in genuine cases actively helps passengers and their relatives to get the highest possible relief." Indeed, in some cases, the tribunals themselves approached the victims based on information provided by the Railways to facilitate filing of the application. An analysis by The Indian Express of over 800 RCT orders also shows that out of the 233 cases in which the Railways did not grant ex gratia, the West Bengal government gave ex gratia of Rs 96.45 lakh in a total of 143 injured cases. Apart from this, in at least 42 cases involving West Bengal residents, the Railways and the state government both gave ex gratia totalling Rs 58.48 lakh. The records do not mention any relief awarded by other states. It was on June 2, 2023, that the Coromandel Express from Howrah to Chennai collided with a stationary goods train, and 21 of its derailed coaches went on to hit the tail-end of Yesvantpur Express, near the Bahanaga Bazar station in Balasore. Several of the victims told The Indian Express that they were later contacted by private lawyers to file claim petitions in the RCTs. “The lawyers took details such as acknowledgment of DNA examination, death certificate, Aadhaar card, bank account, hospital bills, etc., to file the case in the RCT,” said one of the applicants. Take the case of Sandhya Singh. She approached the Bhubaneswar RCT bench for more relief - over the Railways’ ex gratia of Rs 50,000 - after undergoing an abortion due to injuries she sustained in the accident. The bench noted that her loss did not fall within the specified list of injuries. But it cited the “interest of justice” to rule “that an amount of Rs 80,000 is provided to mitigate the sufferings which arose out of the railway accident”. Some dodgy claims, too Following the accident, another tricky aspect that the RCT benches had to contend with, according to case records, was to determine whether compensation should be paid where a clear line of dependency could not be established to the deceased. This, again, led to different interpretations of similar cases in at least two cases, records show. Take the case of Bidyadhar Jena (48) and Pradip Kumar Jena (39), brothers of Ramesh Jena, a passenger of Coromandel Express who died in the accident. The two sought a total of Rs 8 lakh in additional compensation after receiving an ex gratia amount of Rs 10 lakh from the Railways. During the course of the hearings, however, it emerged that the victim's parents had passed away earlier, and he had six sisters as well, of which two had already lost their husbands. The RCT bench concluded that the surviving brothers were major in age, not dependent on the deceased and, thus, not entitled to compensation. However, citing their inclusion in the definition of dependents in the Railways Act, the bench granted both the widowed sisters compensation of Rs 8 lakh to be split equally. In another similar case, Bokaro residents Raj Kumar Soren (25) and Shekhar Soren (32) received no ex gratia from the Railways after their younger brother Chhutu Lal Soren died in the accident. Later, they approached the Ranchi RCT for compensation saying they worked as labourers and there was no other person in the family as their parents had died long ago. But the tribunal declined their plea, saying they were not dependents.
