Sri Shyamal Gupta, Member

The complaint case since been dismissed by the Ld. District Forum, aggrieved with such decision, this Appeal is moved u/s 15 of the Consumer Protection Act, 1986 by the Complainant, i.e., Sk. Majaffar Hossain.

The complaint case, in a nutshell, was that, attracted by OPs’ paper advertisement of disbursing gold loan @ 1% p.a., the Complainant availed of financial assistance worth Rs. 3,62,000/- on different dates from the OPs.  Owing to paucity of fund, the Complainant failed to repay the said loans in time.  After overcoming his financial crisis situation, the Complainant obtained Statement of Accounts from the OPs, wherein the outstanding due was shown as Rs. 6,50,870/-.  Being perplexed to find out such exorbitant demand of the OPs, the Complainant shot two letters to them with a request to streamline the anomaly, but to no avail.  Instead, by issuing a letter on 29-01-2013, the OPs again demanded the sum of Rs. 6,50,870/- with a direction to repay the loan within 7 days, else face the consequence of auction of pledged gold.   In such circumstances, he filed the instant complaint case.

By submitting a WV, the OPs stated that the subject loans were repayable within 3 months.  However, the Complainant did not repay the loan amount in time.  Therefore, due notice was sent to the Complainant several times. After receiving such notice, the Complainant filed the complaint case.

Decision with reasons

It appears that initially the complaint case was allowed by the Ld. District Forum against which an Appeal was moved by the financier company and by passing an order on 23-06-2015, the case was remanded to the Ld. District Forum by this Commission for fresh adjudication of the matter. In terms of said direction, the Ld. District Forum decided the case afresh and ultimately dismissed the complaint case; against which this Appeal is moved.

Be it mentioned here that notice of this Appeal was duly served upon the Respondents.  However, they chose to skip the present proceedings.  Accordingly, the Appeal was heard ex parte.

Drawing our attention to the leaflet of the Respondent company, as also a newspaper publication being published by the Company, it is submitted by the Ld. Advocate for the Appellant that through such misleading ads/publicity, the Respondents befooled his client.  Although in the said advertisement, it was clearly mentioned that the Respondents would charge interest @ 1% p.m. in respect of gold loans, they charged excessive interest by manipulating documents.

On a reference to the above referred documents, we find that, indeed the Respondents offered to lend gold loan at an interest of @ 1% p.m.  Significantly, the Respondents did not clarify their position in this regard in the WV submitted before the Ld. District Forum.

Also, it is noticed from the order of the Ld. District Forum dated 17-07-2014 that on perusal of documents, viz., Annexure ‘A’, ‘A1’ and ‘A2’, the Ld. District Forum found that the applicable rate of interest was not mentioned on those documents.  In fact, the specified column meant for mentioning the rate of interest was left blank.

We have also noticed from the impugned order that the Respondents did not produce the original agreement copy in respect of Loan Account No. 5273 despite the specific direction of the Ld. District Forum to that effect. 

Accordingly, while the very authenticity of the so-called loan agreements have not been proved by the Respondents by producing concerned original documents, we deem it appropriate to direct the Respondents to recast the concerned loan after taking into consideration the rate of interest @ 1% p.m. in respect of all the three loan accounts being nos. PPL-1862, PPL-1985 and PPL-5273 and send the same to the Appellant for due payment within a month of receipt of the revised detail Statement of Accounts.

The Appeal, thus, succeeds in part.

Hence,

O R D E R E D

The Appeal stands allowed in part against the Respondents.  Respondents are directed to send revised Statement of Accounts as stated hereinabove within a period of 15 days from this day and release the pledged gold ornaments within 7 days of receipt of full payment from the Appellant.  Respondents shall also pay compensation amounting to Rs. 50,000/- to the Appellant, i.d., simple interest @ 9% p.a. shall be payable on the aforesaid amount for the entire period of default.  The impugned order is hereby set aside.