Thursday, August 11, 2022

a lawyer in India who had been overcharged by 25cents for train tickets in 1999 has finally won his 22-year-old case against the railway to get a refund

he has attended more than 100 hearings in connection to the case, because he's determined to get back the  extra $0.25 he had to pay at a railway station in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.

Chaturvedi immediately complained about having been overcharged, but he wasn't offered a refund at the time, according to the BBC. So, he decided to file a complaint against the North East Railway (Gorakhpur), part of the Indian Railways, and the booking clerk involved in the incident at a consumer court in Mathura.

Consumer courts are notoriously slow in India, due to the large number of cases brought forward every year. That's why it took Chaturvedi 22 years to see his case through.

"The railways also tried to dismiss the case, saying complaints against the railways should be addressed to a railway tribunal and not a consumer court," Chaturvedi told the BBC. "But we used a 2021 Supreme Court ruling to prove that the matter could be heard in a consumer court," Chaturvedi added.

Twenty-two years after the Indian lawyer filed the case against the railway, the consumer court sided with Chaturvedi. The railway company was ordered to pay the man a fine of 15,000 rupees—the equivalent of $188—as well as refund him the 25 cents


2 comments:

  1. Justice served. Being his own counsel, he could afford to pursue this. Does this matter bring disgrace to the ticket agent and his family? Will they be ostracized from tea parties henceforth?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. you ask a lot of questions for someone that isn't blogging!
      I'll answer them if you blog.
      OR, I can blog, and though I read the questions, I don't research them, so I use my time to blog instead.
      I think you'd rather I blog than try and answer the tea party question

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