Kerala SHRC orders Southern Railway to pay Rs 2 lakh to woman wrongfully arrested after ticket mix-up

A woman travelling with a confirmed train reservation was pulled off her train at midnight and arrested by the Railway Protection Force, only for it to later emerge that her ticket had been cancelled not by her, but by a complete stranger whose phone had mistakenly received her booking alert. The episode has now cost Southern Railway Rs 2 lakh in compensation, ordered by the Kerala State Human Rights Commission (SHRC).

The commission's ruling, delivered by SHRC chairperson Justice Alexander Thomas, has held the railways accountable both for the administrative error that triggered the chain of events and for how officials handled a lone woman passenger once the mix-up came to light on board.

K Jayasmitha, a native of Erumapetty in Thrissur who now resides in Thiruvananthapuram, had booked berth 41 in coach S4 on train 16348 from Wadakkanchery to Thiruvananthapuram on the night of July 30, 2023. As far as she knew, she was travelling on a valid, confirmed reservation like any other passenger. It was only after boarding that she realised something had gone wrong, when she reached her allotted berth and found another passenger already seated there, according to TOI.

What followed was a rapid and disorienting sequence of events for a woman travelling alone late at night. The ticket examiner (TTE) on duty informed her that her reservation had already been cancelled online, and that she would need to pay a fresh fine of Rs 500 if she wanted to be allotted another berth. Jayasmitha was not carrying that amount with her, and with no way to resolve the situation on the spot, she found herself without a valid seat on a train that was already in motion.

At Aluva station, Jayasmitha was taken off the train and handed over to the Railway Protection Force, TOI reported. RPF personnel went on to arrest her on the charge of travelling without a valid ticket, treating her as though she had deliberately boarded without one, even though she held a genuine reservation that had been cancelled without her knowledge.

She was later released on bail. It was only afterward that the railways themselves reviewed the case and withdrew it, having concluded that it had been wrongly registered against her in the first place, per TOI's report. By then, however, the damage to Jayasmitha had already been done, both in terms of the ordeal of the midnight arrest and, as she would later tell the commission, its knock-on effects on her livelihood.

A departmental inquiry conducted afterward traced the entire episode back to a technical slip: a single digit in the mobile number entered at the time of booking had been altered on the railway's system, TOI reported. Because of this, the SMS notification meant to reach Jayasmitha, including any message related to her ticket, was instead delivered to an entirely unrelated person's phone. That individual, unaware the ticket belonged to someone else, went ahead and cancelled it.

Jayasmitha maintained throughout that the mistake lay with the booking clerk who processed her reservation, and that she bore no responsibility for the digit error that set the entire chain of events in motion, according to TOI.

In its order, SHRC held that removing a woman travelling alone from a train at midnight was wrongful and fell foul of Section 139 of the Railways Act, TOI reported. Justice Thomas directed Southern Railway to pay Jayasmitha Rs 2 lakh in compensation within one month of the order. Should the railways fail to make the payment within six weeks, the amount will begin accruing interest at 8% per annum.

The commission's order does not stop at compensation alone. It also opens the door for a formal departmental inquiry against the railway officials found responsible for the incident, and specifically permits the Southern Railway divisional railway manager to recover the compensation amount from those officials as per law, TOI noted. In effect, while Jayasmitha is to be paid by the railways as an institution, the individuals whose lapses led to her wrongful arrest may ultimately have to bear the cost themselves.

Beyond the compensation for the incident itself, Jayasmitha raised a further grievance before the commission: she said the criminal case registered against her had cost her a government contract job, a consequence that outlasted the arrest and the eventual withdrawal of the case, per TOI's report. SHRC has directed her to formally take up this loss with the government, and has separately instructed the state's minority welfare director to examine and decide on the matter within one month.