In a case which occurred in Kolkata, a man was repeatedly asked to pay interest on a loan which he never took, leading to a complaint
In a case which occurred in Kolkata, a man was repeatedly asked to pay interest on a loan which he never took, leading to a complaint decided by the West Bengal State Consumer Dispute Redressal Commission in The Manager ICICI Bank and others vs. Sri Kalyan Kumar Sur.
Sur had a Gold Credit Card from ICICI Bank with an add-on card in the name of his wife. From December 2004 to November 2005, he made some transactions and got into a dispute over an alleged late payment in which he got into protracted correspondence with the bank. Suddenly, on November 3, 2005, his card statement showed a sum of Rs43,267.95 as outstanding on his name. In the January statement, this amount rose to Rs47,024.52.
Sur contacted the bank manager for an explanation of the amounts debited to his account and was told that he had taken a loan of Rs33,500 from the bank on the basis of his card in April 2005. When the protests form the consumer went unheeded, the matter landed in the District Consumer Redressal Forum at Kolkata. The Forum concluded that no such loan was ever received by the consumer and asked the bank to reverse all the entries in the credit card statement and ordered that he be paid a sum of Rs1,00,000 as compensation.
The bank appealed to the state commission on the premise that the customer was entitled to a loan of Rs33,500, which he had availed as part of advances given to customers holding credit cards. The bank could not produce the transaction papers when asked to. Referring to the Reserve Bank of India guidelines, the commission observed that there was a clear directive that when a person had refused to accept a loan, it was for the bank to withdraw all subsequent penalties and action against him. All these actions were never initiated.
Upholding the Forum’s order, the commission scaled down the compensation from Rs1 lakh to Rs30,000. It passed an order that a copy of the judgment be sent to the governor of the Reserve Bank of India.
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