Whenever a cheque is dishonoured, the bank has to immediately inform the customer who has deposited the cheque and also return the cheque, so that the customer or the consumer has the opportunity to recover the amount from the person who has issued it. Failure to inform the customer and return the cheque constitutes negligence on the part of the bank.

Here is a case where the bank apparently informed the customer and returned the cheque, but forgot to reverse the credit entry made earlier in the account of the customer. Then after six years, during reconciliation of their books of accounts, noticed the mistake and then blamed the customer for not pointing out the mistake and demanded that she return the amount along with interest. The bank promptly wrote to the customer, Anjana Kundu, asking her to pay back the amount of the cheque being Rs 10,000 along with interest on the amount. And the tone of the letter was not that of a bank that had made a mistake and was apologetic about it. If the amount was not returned within seven days, the bank would adopt the necessary legal steps for the recovery of the amount, the bank said in its letter. And next, it informed Kundu of having debited Rs 15,880 from her account.

Kundu then filed a case before the District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum. Her complaint was that the bank had neither informed her of the dishonoured cheque nor returned it. The bank had thus denied her the right to recover the cheque amount from the person who had issued it. And then after six years, it cannot demand that she pay back the amount and withdraw the amount from her account, causing her loss. The bank on the other hand, argued that the cheque had been returned to her, and that the bank had “only committed an innocuous non-culpable mistake” of not making a reverse entry after the cheque was dishonoured. In the end, both the District Forum and later the West Bengal State Commission dismissed Kundu’s complaint saying that the bank had proved that the cheque was returned to the customer. And in the circumstance, the bank was justified in debiting the amount along with interest from her account.

The apex consumer court, before which Kundu filed a revision petition, however, disagreed with the view of the lower consumer courts. It pointed out that the bank had made a mistake in not reversing the credit entry in Kundu’s account and by saying that she had been informed of the returned cheque, the bank could not put the blame entirely on the consumer and not take any responsibility for it. It therefore directed the bank to return the interest debited from Kundu’s account of and pay 5 per cent interest on the amount calculated from the date the amount was debited. It also directed the bank to pay her Rs 2,500 towards litigation costs (Anjana Kundu vs Branch Manager, Bank of Baroda, Revision Petition No 1044 of 2002, decided in September 2003).