Sri Shyamal Gupta, Member

Present Appeal is directed against the Order dated 28-06-2016 passed by the Ld. District Forum, Purba Medinipur in C.C. No. 32/2016 whereof the complaint has been allowed. 

Brief facts of the complaint case are that an amount of Rs. 1,500/- was arbitrarily withdrawn from the savings account of her daughter.  Although necessary complaint was lodged with the bank authority by him, no fruitful result emerged of it.  Hence, the complaint.

Rival contention of the OP is that the account-holder herself withdrew the money from her account and there was no arbitrariness in it.  Accordingly, it prayed for dismissal of the complaint.

Decision with reasons

Both sides are heard on the matter and relevant documents are also referred to extensively to arrive at a judicious decision.

The Ld. District Forum, as it appears, raised some pertinent questions in the matter. While the Appellant tried to answer some of them, it has carefully avoided offering any explanation to the uncomfortable questions.

To cite an example, the Ld. District Forum wondered how did the Appellant disbursed money without seeing the original passbook although money was withdrawn through withdrawal slip. Incidentally, the concerned passbook got misplaced at the relevant point of time.  Curious indeed, the Appellant avoided offering any explanation to clear the mystery surrounding it.

The Ld. District Forum further took due notice of the fact that despite being fully aware of the fact that the Respondent approached the Banking Ombudsman and higher authorities of the Appellant Bank, the Appellant did not preserve the CCTV footage to come clean in the matter. We do not come across any explanation from the side of the Appellant in this regard too.

Above all, although the entire dispute surrounded over the signature contained in the withdrawal slip, the same has not been placed before us.  Ld. District Forum appears to have discovered palpable difference between the signatures appeared on the purported withdrawal slip vis-à-vis specimen signature card.  Also, it appears from the impugned order that on dock, Respondent’s daughter was asked to put her signature, both in English as well as in Bengali on a piece of paper and on comparison of those signatures with other documents, the Ld. District Forum did not notice any similarity in respect of the signatures. In view of such findings, no doubt, the relevant documents would have given us crucial insight in the matter.  However, as the Appellant did not file any of these important pieces of papers, we are unable to satisfy ourselves about the tenability of Appellant’s contention in this regard.

Be it mentioned here that Teacher-in-Charge of the school by issuing a Certificate dated 16-11-2015 confirmed that Respondent’s daughter was present at the school on 01-09-2015. 

All these facts, no doubt, was suffice to establish the bona fide of Respondent’s claim in the matter and therefore, we see no good reason to interfere with the impugned order save and except exonerating the Appellant from the liability of paying punitive fine of Rs. 150/- per day.

Appeal, thus, succeeds in part.

Hence,

O R D E R E D

The Appeal stands allowed on contest in part.  The impugned order is modified to the extent that the Appellant need not pay fine amount of Rs. 150/- per day.  Otherwise, the impugned order shall remain as it is.