22-carat gold claim found false, Chandigarh jeweller penalised

Chandigarh-based jewellery store Nikka Mal Babu Ram and Sons of Sector 22-D will have to pay Rs 2.15 lakh for unfair trade practice and mental agony and harassment caused to Raj Kumar, a Sector 41 resident, who was sold gold of lesser purity but told it was of 22 carat. Punitive damages worth Rs 5 lakh will also have to be paid by the offender to the legal aid cell.

The jeweller will also have to replace the ornaments with 22-carat gold or pay the equivalent current market price to the complainant. The pieces also weigh less than what the consumer was told.

Raj Kumar had bought what he thought were two 22-carat gold bangles and necklace from the store on November 8, 2000, and four more bangles weighing 51.77 gram with 22-carat stamps on November 22 of the same year.

However, on getting suspicious after reading about the jeweller being booked for selling 6.25 carat gold and passing it off as 22 carat to Sanjeev Goyal, a resident of Panchkula, in February 2016, Raj Kumar got his jewellery checked from a certified Delhi lab. Results revealed that the ornaments were plated with inferior metals such as silver, copper and zinc with a layer of 22 carat of gold on the inner and outer surfaces. The overall purity of gold was found to be 64.9% (15.5 carat) for the bangles and 81.2% (19.5 carat) for the necklace.

The forum concluded that the jeweller had deceived the innocent consumer and mentioned the likelihood of other unsuspecting consumers who might not have had the opportunity to discover that the purity of the gold they had purchased was less than 22 carat.

The jeweller had contested Raj Kumar’s charges saying the complaint was time barred as it was filed 15 years after the purchase was made. It was also claimed that the complaint had been filed at the instance of Sanjeev Goyal and that the gold was not tested at an accredited lab.

The punitive damage amount of Rs 5 lakh for the welfare/legal aid of the needy and poor consumers will have to be deposited by the jeweller in the consumer legal aid fund account. When contacted, Manu Jain, one of the directors of the Sector 22 jewellery store, declined to comment, saying he was “very upset”.

‘Unfair tendency’

Responding to an argument that a criminal complaint of cheating against the store had been dismissed earlier, the forum said the findings of a criminal court were not binding on a civil court or consumer forum. “One may

not have mens rea (guilty mind or guilty knowledge) while selling the articles but definitely it constitutes an unfair tendency to become multimillionaire overnight by resorting to unfair means, ie deceiving the innocent consumers,” the consumer forum remarked.

First Published: Sep 23, 2018 11:00 IST