Lawyer wins 22year legal battle over 25 cents

A LAWYER who won a 22-year court battle for compensation from Indian Railways after being overcharged $0.25 said Friday (12) that his quest for justice was worth the effort.

Tungnath Chaturvedi bought two tickets from his hometown Mathura to Moradabad in 1999 and was charged 90 rupees instead of 70, the price of the fare. He was given a receipt, but officials at the state rail monopoly repeatedly refused him a refund.

The two cities are less than 300 kilometres (185 miles) apart, but his journey to justice needed 120 hearings at the Mathura consumer court before five different judges over more than two decades before he was awarded compensation this month.

The case is a reflection of India’s sluggish judicial system, where litigants are often frustrated by delays and cases can run for years, if not decades, in overburdened courts that have a backlog of around 50 million cases.

‘This wasn’t about money but about my rights,’ Chaturvedi insisted.