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.
