Agartala: The Tripura Consumer Court ruling has offered relief for an SBI customer, who has been a victim of an OTP scam.
The Tripura State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (SCDRC) has directed the State Bank of India to compensate one of its consumers after he had lost money because of an OTP scam.
Following the directive, the bank had refunded a part of the money lost due to the fraud, but is yet to refund the entire amount.
The State consumer forum ordered SBI to pay the remaining amount. It also ordered the bank to pay Rs 50,000 to the customer as compensation for their deficiency in service.
The Commission found that SBI officials were responsible for delays in responding to a complaint, leading to the loss of around Rs 1.49 lakh by the consumer.
“Had the Bank authorities been more vigilant and diligent in rendering service to the complainant-appellant, then the debit of Rs1, 49,500 would have been easily avoided,” the SCDRC stated.
The Commission criticized the bank for not taking any appropriate actions for three days before providing assistance to the customer.
The SBI had replied that the two of those days were holidays, being a Saturday and a Sunday.
However, the Commissioner rejected the claim made by the bank.
Satish Debbarma, a customer of SBI received a fraudulent call on August 19, 2022, which led him to share his One-Time Password (OTP).
The scammers hacked his account and debited over three lakh rupees from his account.
The customer had immediately tried to contact the SBI Branch Manager, but could not make the call as his phone was also hacked.
The branch manager immediately deactivated all of Debbarma’s accounts and averted subsequent attempts made by the hackers to transfer more money. He also lodged a police complaint on the following day.
The SBI, on August 24, 2022, released a sum of Rs 1,96,000 to Debbarma, leaving the balance amount lost due to the fraud as unpaid.
The customer eventually approached the district consumer court seeking a refund of the unpaid amount.
But after the district forum dismissed his complaint, he filed an appeal before the State consumer forum.
In his complaint, the Debbarma stated that he had immediately contacted the bank’s system administrator only for the official to reply that he could not do anything before Monday, August 22, 2022.
The State commission found that the entire amount of money that was hacked was on hold and kept in a parking account of the bank until 12 am on August 22.
Despite this, the system administrator did not do anything to ensure that the money kept on hold was refunded to the bank account of the customer.
The Commission found that the amount sought to be transferred by the hackers was kept on hold for over 96 hours, before only a portion of the amount was debited from the parking account of the SBI.
The Commission also observed that the customer had repeatedly urged the system administrator to take steps so that this money is not transferred to the hackers.
The Commission stated that there was utter negligence on the bank’s part and that the bank had failed to provide the level of service expected by its customers.
