India, Oct. 21 -- The Bombay High Court has directed the railways to pay Rs.8 lakh in compensation to the parents of a labourer who died after falling from an overcrowded local train in 2015, ruling that the absence of a ticket corresponding to his journey on his body cannot be the reason to dismiss a compensation claim.

A single-judge bench of justice Aarti Sathe set aside a 2020 order of the Railway Accident Claims Tribunal (RACT), which had rejected the family's claim because no train ticket matching the journey during which the man fell was found on his body. The judge said the tribunal had taken a "narrow and erroneous" view of the Railways Act and deprived the deceased's family members of the "beneficial legislation".

The incident...