KARACHI: A consumer court has directed Pakistan Railways to pay Rs50,000 to a passenger over train delay travelling from Ghokti to Karachi.
Plaintiff, Ayaz Ali Chachar, a lawyer by profession, filed a lawsuit against the defendant Pakistan Railway under the Sindh Consumer Protection Act 2014 (SCPA), sought Rs500,000 in damages for negligence, defective services, mental agony and refund the amount paid for ticket along with mark-up.
According to the plaintiff, in January 2025, he booked a ticket on the Khyber Mail to travel from Ghotki to Karachi. He stated that the train departed from Ghotki and arrived in Karachi after a significant delay. As a professional lawyer, he had prior commitments, which were disrupted due to the delayed and deficient service provided by the Pakistan Railways.
The proceedings were carried out ex-parte as Pakistan Railway failed to file their response within stipulate period.
After hearing and examining evidence from the plaintiff, Judicial Magistrate (South) Abdul Ahad Memon, ordered the defendant to pay Rs50,000 in compensation to the plaintiff.
The court also advised the Pakistan Railway to “improve their service in all aspects to ensure smooth, timely and quality services”.
The court observed that the plaintiff had suffer “inconvenience, harassment and mental distress on account of the inordinate and unexplained delay of more than four and a half hours in an overnight journey, and such distress, being a natural and foreseeable consequence of the proven deficiency in service, warrants award of reasonable compensation, even in the absence of proof of specific pecuniary loss.”
Regarding the refund ticket amount, the court dismissed the claim and issued a decree for Rs50,000 as general damages against the defendant.
“The mental distress and inconvenience occasioned by such delay cannot be viewed in isolation from the ordinary human experience of travel, inasmuch as a passenger who plans his journey and subsequent professional or personal engagements around a specified arrival time is entitled to expect that the service provider shall adhere, within reasonable limits, to the schedule undertaken by it. Where such expectation is belied by hours of unexplained delay, more particularly on an overnight journey, the resultant hardship is not confined to mere loss of time but extends to disruption of sleep, anxiety regarding missed commitments, without any information or redress from the service provider,” the judge observed.
“In the case of the complainant, the anxiety and distress occasioned by an arrival delayed by more than four and a half hours would naturally be more acute, and the resultant mental strain suffered by him is a foreseeable and direct consequence of the deficient service rendered by the defendant. Such failure on the part of the defendant to operate and complete the journey within the scheduled time, without any explanation or justification having been offered on record, squarely constitutes deficiency in service as contemplated under the Act,” the judge added.
Published in Dawn, August 12th, 2026
