Prakash Kaur, an elderly woman, pleaded with the judge for protection against the bank's highhandedness and sought restoration of the vehicle seized by the bank.
NEW DELHI: Charged with using 'coercive' methods through hired musclemen to recover outstanding loan amount, ICICI bank on Wednesday decided before the Supreme Court that it would settle the repayment dispute with a 75-year-old woman.
Prakash Kaur, an elderly woman, pleaded with the judge for protection against the bank's highhandedness and sought restoration of the vehicle seized by the bank.
The bank's lawyers, Harish Salve and Mukul Rohatagi, assured that Kaur's grievance would be redressed.
A Bench of Justices A R Lakshmanan and Altamas Kabir asked Kaur's lawyer to delete the names of some finance ministry officials from the list of respondents.
According to Kaur's counsel, she had failed to pay only a sum of Rs 28,000 and not more than Rs 2 lakh as claimed by the bank. He also accused ICICI bank of making wrong entries by crediting the cheques issued by Kaur towards the repayment of installments into the account of one Prakash Dubey and then blaming her of default.
The Allahabad High Court had earlier asked the police to register criminal cases against the bank officials and others who intimidated the lady and seized her car.
According to Salve, there were certain typographical errors in the notices served to Kaur. He, however, maintained that though the bank had erroneously served the notice in the name of one Prakash Dubey, the account number was that of the defaulter.
The Bank was willing to forego the interest on the defaulting loan amount if the complainant was willing to pay Rs 1.63 lakh towards the principal arrears, Salve said. The seized truck would also be returned to her if Kaur was willing to pay Rs 50,000 out of the arrears immediately, he added.
While Kaur's counsel pleaded some time to discuss the offer with her, the judges deferred their final hearing till Monday.
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