IRCTC refusing refund of Retiring room booking amount

I traveled to Anand Vihar (Delhi) from Howrah (West Bengal) on last 19th March, 2016 by 12249 HWH ANVT Yuva Express (Superfast). The train was scheduled to reach Anand Vihar by 11:20 am next day. Keeping that in mind I had booked one IRCTC retiring room (AC) at Anand Vihar terminal from 8:00 am to 8:00 pm.

Railways/IRCTC is charging Super-fast charge for the Yuva Express, there was no natural/human made disaster or calamity or mechanical fault in train on that day. Still the train was late by 7.5 hours and reached Anand Vihar by 7:50 pm. I have the late slip from the station manager. I immediately reached the retiring room by 8:00 pm and requested for cancellation. The attendant said I had to submit cancellation online. The online system was not allowing cancellation as the booking time was over and I immediately dropped an email asking refund of my money which they are denying.

Railways and IRCTC are extremely irresponsible and inhuman. The Yuva Express does not have pantry. Majority of the passengers including children, women and senior citizens ran out of food and water. Toilets were also dry. I am ashamed to say we traveled like cattle class, all helpless.

While the train was delayed by almost 3-4 hours at Kanpur, I tried to cancel my IRCTC retiring room by logging into IRCTC Tourism website which was down and also did not get any response from 1800110139 (IRCTC Tourism helpline) even after waiting for 15-20 minutes and I constantly heard a message that "all the executives are busy, please try after sometime". Their service is very poor and unreliable.

Now, why should I pay the penalty of Railways negligence and worthlessness? Does they care for the passengers at all? In fact I was about to miss my connecting bus because of the delay. Many people missed connecting trains also, not everyone raise a voice. There should be law that if a train is late beyond 3 hours Railways should pay penalty, food and accommodation. Suppose, I have another connecting train from Delhi, then how many hours of gap is sufficient to be safe?

IRCTC Tourism is selling retiring room tickets against valid PNR no. So, if I cannot reach because of Railways fault, why should I be charged? Both of the train and retiring rooms are serviced by IRCTC and Indian Railways. They are simply cheating passengers.

Kindly take actions so that I may get my money back and there is some law to prevent Indian Railways from cheating customers.