Sri Shyamal Gupta, Member

This Appeal is directed against the Order dated 31-08-2015 passed by the Ld. District Forum, North 24 Parganas in C.C. No. 216/2015.

Case of the Complainant, in a nutshell, is that on 07-12-2014, she visited the ATM Centre of Punjab National Bank for the purpose of checking his account balance.  Allegedly, although he put the correct PIN code for this purpose, the machine did not work properly. Thereafter, on 16-12-2014, while going through the updated passbook, he noticed than an amount of Rs. 5,000/- was withdrawn from his account on 07-12-2014 although he did not withdraw any such money through ATM.  As written complaint to this effect with the OPs did not yield any positive result, he filed the complaint.

The OPs did not contest the case.  So, the case was heard ex parte.

Decision with reasons

Heard the Ld. Advocates of the parties and gone through the documents on record carefully.

It is the case of the Appellant that statement of the JP Log Transaction No. 770 dated 07-12-2014 in respect of the ATM ID No. N1442700 showed the transaction as successful and no excess cash was found in the ATM.  Accordingly, it prayed for dismissal of the case.

Cyber crime is a hard-reality today.  If we take an empirical view, there is no point holding that without having access to both the ATM Card and PIN, it is impossible to withdraw money through ATM. If it was indeed so, banks would not caution account-holders from disclosing the PIN to strangers. 

The nuisance of unauthorized/fraudulent withdrawal of money from ATMs is happening at regular intervals and the law enforcing agencies have busted several rackets involved in such crime.  Yet, unfortunate though, we witness gross laxity on the part of banks to put in place adequate security measures at ATM centres.  Deployment of security personnel at ATM centres are an exception, rather than a norm and since CCTV is kept at most of the ATM centres as a show-piece, swindlers often get away unpunished.  At the same time, other safety measures, like developing biometric debit card, mandatory generation of OTP for every ATM transaction etc. being not given due emphasis, card-holders often fall prey to the sinister designs of offenders. 

In this case, the Appellant, banking upon its JP Log Transaction Statement, tried hard to prove that it was none other than the Respondent No. 1, who withdrew the money from the account using its ATM on 07-12-2014.  As usual, no CCTV footage is provided by the Appellant to prove such contention.   We afraid, merely on the basis of JP Log Statement, it cannot be conclusively determined that the money was indeed withdrawn by the actual beneficiary. 

We have also noticed that the Respondent No. 1 alleged in his petition of complaint that four other persons too fall victim of such malpractice, thanks to the gross negligence of the Appellant.  Significantly, in its Appeal, the Appellant has not denied/disputed such fact in specific terms.  Therefore, we see no reason whatsoever to disbelieve the allegation of the Respondent No. 1 in this regard.

Overall, none of the grounds stated in the Appeal appear satisfactory to find fault with the impugned order.  We, therefore, refrain ourselves from interfering with the impugned order in any manner save and except relieving the Appellant of the liability to pay penalty @ Rs. 100/- per diem as ordered by the Ld. District Forum.

The Appeal, thus, succeeds in part.

Hence,

O R D E R E D

that the Appeal stands allowed in part on contest.  Appellant is exonerated of the liability to pay punitive fine @ 100/- per day.  Otherwise, the impugned order shall remain in toto.  Appellant shall comply with this modified order within 45 days hence.