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Bank to pay man Rs 3 lakh for losing sale deed

IDBI Bank will have to pay compensation of Rs 3.22 lakh to a Pune man after it lost the original sale deed of his property, which he had submitted while procuring a home loan in 2003.

The complainant, Captain Vikrant Apandkar, had sought the document after foreclosing the loan in 2007. "He has been continuously making efforts to obtain the original documents.

The bank disowned its stand in locating and dispatching the original document to the complainant for quite a long time. The complainant was subjected to unnecessary correspondence and follow-up since he had availed the loan in 2003," said the Maharashtra State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission.

Apandkar had earlier filed a complaint against the bank in the district forum. But on May 31, 2012, when the forum dismissed the complaint on the grounds that it was filed late, he filed an appeal in the state commission.

In the appeal, Apandkar said that on June 30, 2007, the bank issued him a no-dues certificate, but told him that the original sale deed was lost. Apandkar said that after submitting the document as evidence for availing the loan in 2003, he repeatedly contacted the bank to retrieve it. The bank said that it had conducted an extensive search to trace the document. However, in 2009, the bank changed its stand and said that the document was never submitted. Aggrieved by the last communication, Apandkar filed the complaint.

The commission held that the district forum had wrongly held that the cause of action arose from 2003, when, in fact, it arose after the bank's last communication in 2009. The commission said that as the complaint was filed in the district forum in 2010, it was valid as it is within two years as required by the Consumer Protection Act.

"The stand taken by the bank was unreasonable and beyond imagination as no bank can advance loan without going through the original documents and taking the custody of such documents," said the commission.

Comment:
The order of the state forum is somewhat strange. While the Ld. Commission was absolutely correct in allowing the petition to be filed as it was within limitation and was also right is suspecting and leaning in favour of the complainant due to the changed stance of the bank, to say that "Stand taken by the bank is unreasonable and beyond the imagination as no Bank can advance loan without going through the original documents and taking the custody of such documents......" is an assumption on which a judgment should not be based.

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