Court case(2000) 2 SCC 465

Hanuffa Khatoon, a Bangladeshi national, arrived at Howrah railway station to catch a train. She was taken by some railway employees, on the pretext of helping her, to a room in the Yatri Niwas, a guest house run by the Railways at the station, where she was gang-raped by several persons including railway employees. Chandrima Das, an advocate of the Calcutta High Court, filed a petition under Article 226 seeking compensation for the victim. The High Court awarded Rs 10 lakh as compensation, to be paid by the Railways. The Union of India appealed, contending among other things that the Railways were not liable for the criminal acts of their employees and that the victim, as a foreign national, could not claim relief under the Constitution.

The Supreme Court dismissed the appeal. Running the railways, and the Yatri Niwas as part of them, is a commercial activity, not a sovereign function, and the Union is vicariously liable for the acts of its employees committed in the course of that activity; the employees who controlled the Yatri Niwas had used their position to commit the crime. The right to life under Article 21, which includes the right to live with human dignity, is available to every person, citizen or not; the fundamental rights in Part III are read in the light of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The petition was maintainable as a public-law remedy, and the award of Rs 10 lakh compensation was upheld.