J.B. Pardiwala, J.

This First Appeal under Section 23 of the Railway Claims Tribunal Act, 1987 (for short, 'the Act, 1987'), is at the instance of the original claimant and is directed against the judgment and order dated 6th August 2015 passed by the Railway Claims Tribunal, Ahmedabad Bench at Ahmedabad, in Case No.OA/2012/0226.

2. The short point involved in this Appeal is, whether the appellant, being the elder brother of his deceased handicapped younger brother who died on account of an accident while travelling from Vapi to Lucknow on 31st August 2012 by Train No.19037 (Bandra Terminus - Gorakhpur Avadh Express), could be said to be dependent as defined under Section 123(b) of the Act, 1989 so as to make the claim application maintainable in law.

3. The claim application filed by the appellant herein came to be rejected by the Tribunal only on the short point that a major brother cannot be said to be dependent on his minor brother. Mr.Rathin Raval, the learned counsel appearing for the appellant, submitted that the term 'dependent' should not be restricted to only economic dependence but dependence of love, affection, care and protection of the deceased passenger as well. He would submit that the word 'dependent' in clause (ii) of Section 123(b) of the Act, 1989, should not be given restrictive meaning but contextual meaning keeping in view the objective of the statute so as to compensate the unfortunate death of a passenger in a railway accident. In support of his submission, reliance has been placed on a Division Bench decision of the Punjab and Haryana High Court in the case of Dhyan Singh and another v. Union of India and Others reported in, (2009) AIR(P&H) 56.

4. Having heard the learned counsel appearing for the appellant and having gone through the materials on record, the only question that falls for my consideration is, whether the Tribunal committed any error in passing the impugned order.

5. The term 'dependent' has been defined under Section 123(b) of the Act, 1989. The same reads as under :

"123. Definitions.-In this Chapter, unless the context otherwise requires,-

(a) "accident" means an accident of the nature described in section 124;

(b) "dependant" means any of the following relatives of a deceased passenger, namely:-

(i) the wife, husband, son and daughter, and in case the deceased passenger is unmarried or is a minor, his parent;

(ii) the parent, minor brother or unmarried sister, widowed sister, widowed daughter-in-law and a minor child of a predeceased son, if dependant wholly or partly on the deceased passenger;

(iii) a minor child of a pre-deceased daughter, if wholly dependant on the deceased passenger;

(iv) the paternal grandparent wholly dependant on the deceased passenger."

6. In the case on hand, the deceased who happened to be the younger brother of the claimant was handicapped. The Tribunal recorded the following findings while rejecting the claim application :

"6. Bare perusal of the above, would reveal that under no circumstances, a major brother can be said to be dependant upon minor Orthopaedic brother, particularly when he was too young and was not even employed. Therefore, whether the deceased was married or unmarried would make no difference in the eyes of law. We may observe that similar issue where minor children, who died in train accident and his brother and parents claim compensation on account of untoward accident has been dealt with by various court.

7. We may observe that Division Bench of Hon'ble Gauhati High Court in Mohd. Shaukat Ali v. General Manager (Claims) N.F. Railways, 1987 1 GLR 172, after analyzing various statutes i.e. Workmen's Compensation Act, Fatal Accident Act, 1855 & Railway Act, 1890, particularly Section 82-A, inserted later by amending said Act, and tracing history regarding Railways as a carrier, vide a detailed judgment, following various judgments including G.N. Bhandary v. The Railway Administration, (1983) AIR Allahabad 150 (DB) held that in the absence of e