By Sujit Bhar
Justice Pankaj Jain of the Punjab and Haryana High Court recently delivered a judgment that should have been unnecessary in the first place. The Court held that a bomb blast inside a passenger train is an “accident” within the meaning of Section 124 of the Railways Act, 1989, thereby making the Union of India liable to compensate the victims and their families.
Legally, the judgment is significant because it settles an important question of statutory interpretation. Morally, however, it exposes something far more disturbing—the willingness of the State to spend decades contesting compensation payable to citizens who lost their lives in one of the most tragic forms of public transport disaster.
The judgment raises a question that goes beyond legal technicalities: should a welfare state be fighting bereaved families over compensation arising from a terrorist bomb blast on one of its own trains?
The answer ought to be self-evident.
The litigation arose from a horrific incident on February 8, 1992, when a bomb exploded aboard the 24-Down Janta Express travelling from Tohana to Jind. Five passengers lost their lives, while several others suffered fatal and grievous injuries. Following the explosion, FIR No. 14 was registered under various provisions of the Explosive Act, the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA), the Indian Penal Code and the Indian Railways Act.
The Railway Claims Tribunal subsequently awarded compensation to the families of those who died, treating the explosion as an accident covered under the Railways Act. That should ordinarily have been the end of the matter.
Instead, the Union of India chose to challenge those awards before the Punjab and Haryana High Court.
Its principal contention was that a bomb blast could not be regarded either as an “untoward incident” or as an “accident” under the Railways Act because it was the result of criminal acts committed by third parties. Therefore, according to the government, the Railways could not be held liable.
ABOUT HUMAN CONSEQUENCES
It is this stand that deserves serious scrutiny. Governments frequently proclaim their commitment to building a welfare state. Every budget speech, every policy document and every election manifesto is replete with promises of citizen welfare, social justice and compassionate governance. Yet, when an actual test of those principles arose, the State chose not to embrace responsibility but to contest it.
The litigation itself tells a story that should trouble every citizen.
The bomb blast occurred in 1992. The High Court’s judgment has come more than three decades later. For over 30 years, families who had already endured the trauma of losing their loved ones were compelled to continue fighting litigation against the very government that ought to have been standing beside them. Many claimants may themselves have passed away during this prolonged legal battle. Children who were minors when the incident occurred are now middle-aged adults.
Justice delayed is often described as justice denied. In matters involving compensation for accidental deaths, the phrase becomes even more poignant because compensation is intended to provide immediate financial relief to families suddenly deprived of their breadwinners. When such relief arrives decades later, much of its purpose has already been defeated.
This delay is not merely administrative inefficiency. It reflects a deeper institutional tendency to litigate almost every adverse order, irrespective of its larger human consequences.
The Punjab and Haryana High Court rightly focused on the legal architecture of Section 124 of the Railways Act. Justice Pankaj Jain observed that the provision establishes a regime of strict liability. Once death or personal injury results from an accident to a train carrying passengers, liability arises irrespective of whether there has been any wrongful act, neglect or default on the part of the Railway Administration.
A RELATIONSHIP OF TRUST
This principle is important because it recognises that passengers enter into a relationship of trust with the Railways. They purchase tickets not merely for transportation, but also with the legitimate expectation that the State-operated system will ensure reasonable safety. When something goes catastrophically wrong, the burden of compensation cannot be shifted onto victims by pointing to the absence of negligence.
The Court further observed that an explosion occurring inside a passenger train is undoubtedly an unforeseen event that startles the senses and falls outside the ordinary course of railway travel. Such an occurrence squarely answers the ordinary understanding of an accident.
Justice Jain also relied upon the Northern Railway Administration’s own Accident Manual, and this aspect of the judgment is particularly noteworthy.
Under Item No. 103 of the Manual, railway accidents are classified into various categories including Train Accidents, Unusual Incidents and Miscellaneous Consequential Train Accidents. Fire and explosions are expressly recognised within these classifications because they lead to serious consequences including loss of human life.
The Court, therefore, held that the Railways could not simultaneously classify explosions as accidents for their own internal administrative purposes while arguing before the Court that bomb explosions somehow cease to be accidents when compensation becomes payable.
The contradiction was impossible to ignore.
Justice Jain, therefore, concluded: “Once it has been held that fire or explosion in the train falls within the definition of ‘accident’, the Union of India cannot escape its liability to pay compensation on account of death arising out of bomb blast in the train/railway station.”
THE BIGGER QUESTION
The judgment thus restores legal coherence. Yet, the larger constitutional question remains unanswered. Why should the State have fought this litigation at all?
Modern democratic governments derive legitimacy not merely from enforcing laws, but from protecting citizens when tragedy strikes.
Compensation in such situations is not charity. It is recognition of the State’s responsibility.
The Railways are not an ordinary commercial enterprise. They constitute one of the largest public transport systems in the world and remain entirely under governmental control. The State determines security protocols, manages railway infrastructure, deploys personnel, formulates passenger safety measures and oversees intelligence coordination relating to railway security.
Passengers exercise no control over these matters.
When a bomb blast occurs inside a train, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that there has been a failure somewhere within the security architecture that the State alone controls.
No court may be called upon to determine precisely where that failure occurred in every case. Terrorist attacks can occur despite elaborate precautions. Absolute security may be unattainable. But that does not dilute the State’s responsibility.
On the contrary, because security remains exclusively within governmental control, the moral obligation to compensate victims becomes even stronger.
The Union of India’s attempt to distance itself from liability by arguing that third-party criminal acts caused the explosion appears fundamentally inconsistent with democratic governance.
DO CITIZENS MATTER?
If accepted, such reasoning would establish a dangerous principle—that governments bear responsibility only when their own employees directly cause harm, but not when citizens suffer because the State failed to prevent foreseeable security threats. That draws out a scary question: do citizens matter?
That is not how constitutional democracies function.
Public confidence in government institutions depends upon the assurance that when citizens become victims of extraordinary violence while using public services, the State will respond with compassion rather than procedural resistance.
Compensation is one expression of that compassion.
Indeed, one may argue that victims of bomb blasts in public transport deserve a deeper sense of compensation than victims of ordinary accidents. An ordinary railway accident may arise from mechanical failure, human error or operational negligence. A bomb blast represents something even more fundamental.
It signifies that the State’s security apparatus failed to prevent an act of mass violence directed against innocent passengers.
Even if no individual official can be personally blamed, the institutional responsibility remains.
THE OBLIGATION TO COMPENSATE
The obligation to compensate should, therefore, arise not merely because the law defines the incident as an “accident,” but because the State has failed in its primary obligation to provide safe passage to citizens using public infrastructure.
The High Court has now clarified the legal position. Yet, this case should also become a lesson in governance.
Governments must reconsider the culture of routine appeals, especially in compensation matters involving death, disability and public tragedies.
Not every legal argument that can technically be advanced ought to be advanced.
The State is expected to be a model litigant. Courts have repeatedly reminded governments that they are not ordinary private litigants driven solely by financial considerations. Their conduct must reflect fairness, reasonableness and constitutional morality.
Dragging grieving families through decades of litigation over compensation hardly satisfies those standards.
This judgment should, therefore, be remembered not merely for its interpretation of Section 124 of the Railways Act, but also as a reminder of how legal processes can sometimes be employed to postpone justice rather than deliver it.
The law exists to protect citizens, not to exhaust them.
A democracy cannot measure its success only by the number of welfare schemes it announces. It must also be judged by how it treats its citizens when disaster strikes.
When governments contest rightful compensation on narrow legal grounds despite overwhelming humanitarian considerations, they undermine the very ideals of the welfare state they profess to uphold. Justice Pankaj Jain’s judgment has corrected an important legal wrong.
The larger challenge now lies with governments themselves.
The real victory of a welfare state is not in winning cases against its own citizens. It lies in ensuring that those who have already suffered unimaginable loss never have to spend another lifetime proving that they deserved compassion in the first place.
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