OK! The two-letter word that ruined a marriage and cost Indian Railways ₹3 crore

A station master and his wife are making headlines not only for their troubled marriage but also for how their personal misery translated to professional troubles that further compounded personal chaos. The Station Master is a resident of Visakhapatnam, and the wife belongs to Durg.

According to a Times of India report, the Indian Railways employee tied the knot on October 12, 2011, and set a series of suffering on both personal and professional fronts. The harmless ‘OK’ during a marital dispute ended up creating problems that spanned a decade. The two-letter word resulted in the suspension of the station master, a massive railway loss, and a prolonged divorce battle.

A phone argument initiated the decade-long saga. The critical point in their marriage can be traced back to when the station master was on duty and got involved in a heated argument over the phone with his wife. He hung up the call with the statement, “We’ll talk at home, OK?”

This turned out to be a blunder, setting off a bizarre chain of events as the colleague on the other end of the radio transmission misinterpreted this ‘OK’ to be a signal to dispatch a freight train. As a result, the goods train was set off through a restricted area in Maoist-affected territory. This incident resulted in a ₹3 crore penalty to the railways because the train took an unauthorised route that violated night-time restrictions. Consequently, the station master was suspended, adding to his marital woes.

The railway employee eventually filed for divorce while his wife filed a case under IPC Section 498A for cruelty and harassment against him, his father, elder brother, and other family members. The situation worsened after the wife approached the Supreme Court, and the case was transferred to a family court in Durg. After the family court rejected the divorce petition, the station master moved the case to the Chhattisgarh High Court, according to the TOI report.

Court grants divorce after 12-year-long battle

Recently, Justices Rajani Dubey and Sanjay Kumar Jaiswal ruled in favour of the station master and granted him divorce after a 12-year-long legal battle. It was observed that the wife continued her contact with her former lover after marriage, had falsely accused the station master of infidelity, and had made baseless dowry and cruelty allegations.

The court decreed that the wife's actions amounted to mental cruelty and had caused significant emotional distress. The Court held the wife responsible for the train incident that prompted her husband to seek the dissolution of the marriage.