Man issued railway ticket dated 3013, gets compensation
When retired professor Vishnu Kant Shukla boarded the train from Saharanpur to Jaunpur on November 19, 2013, he wasn't prepared for what was coming his way. When the ticket checker arrived, he was humiliated and deboarded from the train. The reason? The ticket was dated 3013, 1000 years in the future. Shukla filed a case against Railways and was compensated by Saharanpur's consumer court.
Shukla explained to ticket checker he was innocent
The 73-year-old said he was visiting a friend whose wife passed away. He insisted as someone who had retired from Hindi department of Saharanpur's college, he would never travel without a ticket. However, the TTE's behavior towards Shukla was uncalled for and he was evicted midway in Moradabad. He then approached consumer forum in Saharanpur where the case went on for five years.
Railways did all they could to prove Shukla was wrong
Shukla's lawyer revealed Railway officers pulled every trick in the book to prove the passenger was wrong. "Railways officials even said that the ticket was not purchased from the booking counter and when the court asked them to produce the booking form, they said they did not have it," said Shukla's lawyer Surender Dixit. But despite all this, Shukla and Dixit continued their fight.
Consumer court directs Railways to give Rs. 13,000 as compensation
The long winding case resulted in Shukla's triumph. On Tuesday, the consumer court in Saharanpur asked Indian Railways to pay Rs. 10,000 to the elderly for mental harassment and another Rs. 3,000 as compensation. "To deboard a person of an advanced age in the middle of a journey causes a great amount of physical strain and mental harassment," the order stated.
