CHENNAI: Over three years after Rs 1.2 lakh was swindled from a savings account of an NRI allegedly by online scammers, a consumer forum in Chennai has asked the bank to refund the amount along with interest.
The ICICI Bank argued that the fraudulent money transfer was made possible only because the customer had compromised his login credentials. But the District Consumer Redressal Forum, Chennai (North) ruled that still bank is a custodian of the money of its customers and hence is liable to refund the money.
The complainant, Ambadi Venugopalan, is a non-resident Indian, having an account with the ICICI Bank’s Anna Nagar branch. On November 4, 2014, he allegedly received an email asking for certain details of his account for deactivation and he claimed that he trusted the mail because when he checked with the anti-phishing department of the bank, the personnel replied that the mail was not a spam.
On November 15, 2014, a sum of Rs 1,20,465 was debited from his account and allegedly fraudulently transferred to one Parthasarathy Ghosh. Venugopalan was in Kerala at that time and immediately contacted the bank branch at Thrissur, Kerala and filed a complaint with the police there. The Kerala police then advised him to file a complaint with the home branch.
Accordingly the complainant lodged two complaints, one with the ICICI branch at Anna Nagar and another with the Anna Nagar police.
The bank argued that it had been cooperating with the law enforcement agencies in the investigations and no fraudulent transactions were possible through internet banking, unless the customer compromised his personal identification.
“The IP addresses used on the date of fraud have detected infinite logins attempted from four different geographic locations - Thane in Maharashtra, Amsterdam, Dhaka and Chittagong. This proves the fact that the complainant had compromised his login credentials on his own. The complainant suppressed the true facts and filed this complaint,” the bank argued.
But the consumer forum, presided over by K Jayabalan, ruled in its recent order, “The opposite parties (the bank) are the guardians to protect the customers’ money in their account.”
The forum also directed the bank to pay nine per cent interest since the date of the fraudulent transfer of the amount, but said the consumer was not eligible for any more compensation.