A man in India who had been overcharged by 20 rupees ($0.25) when purchasing train tickets in 1999 has finally won his 22-year-old case against the railway to get refunded.
Tungnath Chaturvedi told the BBC that he has attended more than 100 hearings in connection to the case, “but you can’t put a price on the energy and time I’ve lost fighting this case.”
Chaturvedi, a lawyer, was reportedly made to pay the extra $0.25 at the Mathura cantonment railway station in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, where he lives.
At the time, Chaturvedi was purchasing two tickets to travel from the city of Mathura to Moradabad—both in Uttar Pradesh—which cost 35 rupees ($0.45) each. Chaturvedi handed over 100 rupees ($1.25), but the clerk at the station returned only 10 rupees ($0.12), charging the lawyer a total of 90 rupees ($1.13) instead of 70 ($0.87).
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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 Chaturvedi the extra $0.25 at 12 percent interest per year, from 1999 to 2022.
The railway was given 30 days to pay the amount to Chaturvedi, beyond which the sum will be revised to an extra 15 percent interest rate.
