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Bank to pay 13K for trouble in issue of duplicate passbook

A consumer forum held Bank of India, guilty of improper service after it issued two duplicate passbooks to the estranged wife of a client without the client’s knowledge and charged him for it. The South Mumbai District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum ordered the bank to pay Mr. Amar Shukla Rs 13,000 for mental agony and costs of lawsuit. It said the bank was guilty of revealing information without the account holder’s knowledge.

Shukla, from Andheri (E), had two accounts with the bank. The passbook entries showed that on April 5, 2008, Rs 55 was debited from his account to issue the duplicate passbooks. He was however unaware of this amount being debited from the account until June 6, 2008.

His wife claimed that she did not apply for any passbook but received it. On verification of the applications for the duplicate passbooks, when it was found that the form had four different signatures on it, of which none of them matched to client’s signature. Bank claims to have issued the duplicate passbook based on an ‘authorized letter’ presented. Shukla sent a legal notice to the bank and also lodged a police complaint in April, 2009. This could bring a bad influence in the other services of the bank like the Interbank Fund Transfer, ATMs, loans like Home loan, Personal loan etc.

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