Bank transfers Rs 48,000 to wrong account, held guilty for ‘careless’ transaction

MUMBAI: Holding Canara Bank guilty of carrying out a careless real-time gross settlement (RTGS) transfer through which Rs48,000 was sent to the wrong account, the state consumer commission recently said it cannot solely depend on the account number and transfer amounts without cross-checking names of the beneficiary, branch and city where the branch is.
Pradeep Tripathi, from Parel, found that the money he wanted transferred to the account of a business supplier in Chandigarh was sent to the account of an unknown person in Hyderabad. The bank was recently ordered to refund the amount along with a compensation of around Rs32,000.
A district forum had ruled in Tripathi’s favour in June 2018. But the bank moved an appeal before Maharashtra State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission.
The commission upheld the district forum order. “The forum rightly held that the correct account number was written by the complainant (Tripathi) on the RTGS transfer slip but opponent (Canara Bank) did not verify before making the transfer and had done it carelessly, and transferred the amount to a different account. The forum correctly held that the complainant was not responsible for the mistake by the bank and it was guilty and responsible for the deficiency in service,” the state commission said.
Tripathi told the commission that after he realised his money was wrongly transferred, he informed the bank, and told it to credit the amount back in his account, but it was not done. Tripathi said he moved the district forum in 2015 after his efforts for a favourable solution from the banking ombudsman failed.
The bank claimed Tripathi provided the wrong account number, which was clear from the RTGS slip. But the state commission said it had gone through the main copy of the slip and found that the number ‘6’ in the account number seemed to have been corrected as ‘8’ by overwriting. It observed that there was no initial or authentication for the correction.
“In normal case, the bank never accepts such overwriting without any initial or authentication. Therefore, the overwriting or correction is done subsequently, and not by the complainant,” the commission said.
It said this was obvious from the acknowledgement slip given to Tripathi with the bank stamp and seal, which showed the wrong account number without any correction or overwriting.