11 years on, consumer panel asks Mumbai woman to approach civil court with her grievance

The complainant had alleged that her important documents and valuables had gone missing from her SBI locker

It took 11 years for the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (NCDRC) to ask a Mulund resident, who had approached the commission stating that her ornaments worth Rs1.30 crore were stolen from the locker of a nationalised bank, to approach a civil court with her grievances.

Representational Image. (File photo)

This matter is not such as can be aptly adjudicated on merit in summary proceedings by a quasi-judicial forum like the consumer commission, said NCDRC presiding member Dinesh Singh.

NCDRC asked Saroj Dasani to approach the civil court concerned, saying the matter is best undertaken by a civil court as it required recording of extensive oral and documentary evidence.

In her complaint, Dasani had said that she had opened a locker at the Mulund (West) branch of the State Bank of Bikaner in June 2008, and had kept some important papers and valuables, like diamond jewellery, in it.

When she visited the bank the next month, she had forgotten her set of keys on the desk of the bank’s locker in-charge. So she went back to the bank, checked the contents of her locker and found everything in order.

But on November 17, 2008, when she visited the bank again and opened the locker, she found it was completely empty and all her documents and valuables were missing, said her complaint. She immediately lodged a complaint in writing with the branch manager.

The complainant believed that someone had made duplicate keys of her locker during the time that her keys were left at the bank.

Blaming the bank for the theft, Dasani said the locker cannot be opened without the master key, which is in the possession of a bank officer and hence, the bank was responsible for the theft of her valuables worth Rs1.30 crore.

The bank responded to the complaint, contending that the locker was also being operated independently by complainant’s husband. The bank also asserted that the matter required adjudication of issues that involve disputed questions of facts and therefore the matter should not be adjudged in summary proceedings before the consumer commission, but by a civil court.

NCDRC accepted the bank’s contention and returned the complaint, with liberty to the complainant to move a competent civil court.