Institute for Migrant Rights
Railway line at Cianjur station, c. 1890 · KITLV, CC BY 4.0

Migration Jurisprudence from the South › India

Chairman, Railway Board v. Chandrima Das

Supreme Court of India · India · 2000-01-28 · National court

Citation: (2000) 2 SCC 465
Type of case: Constitutional and human rights
Outcome: Decided for the migrant side

Question

Can a Bangladeshi woman, not an Indian citizen, claim compensation for rape by railway employees?

What the court decided

Yes. The right to life and dignity under Article 21 protects every person, citizen or not; the Railways were liable to pay compensation.

In plain language

A woman from Bangladesh was raped by railway staff at a station in Kolkata. The Supreme Court said the right to life protects foreigners too and ordered the railways to pay her.

Dalam bahasa sederhana

Seorang perempuan dari Bangladesh diperkosa staf kereta api di stasiun Kolkata. MA menyatakan hak hidup juga melindungi orang asing dan memerintahkan perusahaan kereta api membayar ganti rugi.

Pertanyaan: Bisakah perempuan Bangladesh, bukan warga India, menuntut ganti rugi atas pemerkosaan oleh pegawai kereta api?

What happened afterwards

  • 2000-01-28: Compensation upheld.

Sources

Open this decision in the interactive collection (compare, filter, Indonesian view, downloads).

Cite as: Institute for Migrant Rights (2026), Migration Jurisprudence from the South, version 0.1, https://theimr.org/court-decisions/d/in-chandrima-das-2000/. This page summarizes a court decision for research and advocacy; it is not legal advice.

For researchers

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Keywords: case law; jurisprudence; judicial decisions; comparative constitutional law; courts and migration; judicial behavior; litigation outcomes; refugee law; non-refoulement; citizenship and nationality; empirical legal studies; empirical legal scholarship; quantitative legal research; statistical analysis in law; law and economics; law and economics of migration; comparative law; socio-legal studies; legal pluralism; migration law; labor migration; migrant workers’ rights; human rights law; access to justice; Global South; Asia; Africa; Middle East; Latin America; Indonesia; open data; replication data.