Mumbai: A minor, that is individuals below 18 years of age, will not be charged a fine if found travelling ticketless alone. This comes after the Railway Board in Delhi issued a circular on May 25 to all 16 zones of railways in the country, instructing that no action should be taken against minors if found travelling without a ticket. The reason behind this decision is that minors cannot be presented in front of just any court, in this case, the railway magistrate court. They have to be presented before the juvenile court.
The circular says that if the railways still wants to take action against the minor, it should approach the juvenile court. “If found (that) a person below the age of 18 has committed a wrong then either the Railway Police or ticket checking authorities should not collect any fine from such minors,” the circular says.
It does give a course of action in the case that railway authorities feel the crime is serious or more than just travelling without a ticket — “If the railway authorities are required to initiate action against the minor for the wrong, if any, then proper proceeding is to submit a report before the Juvenile Justice Board enacted as per Section 4 of the Juvenile Justice Act (2015). On the other hand, they are not supposed to submit and report physically present the juveniles before the railway magistrates.”
Officials said that they had been aware of this discrepancy and more often than not, ticket checkers would let off ticketless minors anyway. An official said, “If you noticed, the ticket collector would hold the minors like school or college students back for a while and collect the fine from the adult passengers.” He added that the minors would eventually be let off the hook. “The minors would be given warnings and in case he/she lived closed to the station we ask them to call their guardians and ask them to pay the fine, but this too is very rare,” he said.
As the rule will be pan-India, it will be implemented on long distance trains as well on Mumbai suburban. The latter sees a large number of students take the train from suburbs to renowned schools and colleges that are mostly located in South Mumbai.
Cracking down
Western Railway conducted regular checks during April 2017 wherein around 2.60 lakh cases of ticketless/irregular travel including unbooked luggage cases were detected. This resulted in the recovery of Rs 12.18 crore, which was more than what was collected in the corresponding month of last year. During April, 23 cases of illegal transfer of reserved tickets were detected.
