Raghunath Singh Rana & ANR v. Union Of India

(a) suicide or attempted suicide by him;

(b) self-inflicted injury;

(c) his own criminal act;

(d) any act committed by him in a state of intoxication or insanity; (e) any natural cause or disease or medical or surgical treatment unless such treatment becomes necessary due to injury caused by the said untoward incident.

Explaining the import of the aforesaid provisions Supreme Court in Rina Devi's case supra observed as under :- "16.2 Coming to the proviso to Section 124A to the effect that no compensation is payable if passenger dies or suffers injury due to the situations mentioned therein, there is no difficulty as regards suicide or attempted suicide in which case no compensation may be payable. Conflict of opinions in High Courts has arisen on understanding the expression 'self inflicted injury' in the proviso. In some decisions it has been held that injury or death because of negligence of the victim was at par with self inflicted injury. We may refer to the decisions of High Courts of Kerala in Joseph PT (supra), Bombay in Pushpa (supra) and Delhi in Shayam Narayan (supra) on this point."

Applying the aforesaid ratio to the present case, this Court finds that the findings recorded by the Tribunal cannot be sustained. DRM in its investigation concluded that the incident occurred within the precincts of the Railway Station. Mere fact that at the time of incident the deceased had already concluded her journey will not disentitle victim from claiming

compensation as the same does not fall in any of the exceptions as carved out in the proviso appended to Section 124A of the 1989 Act. Accordingly the award passed by the Tribunal is hereby set aside. It is held that the deceased died as a bonafide passenger in an untoward incident.