Abuse of legal process if every authorised bank officer has to face criminal charges on complaints by bank defaulters: Calcutta High Court

If every authorised bank officer has to face criminal charges on complaints made by bank defaulters, then it would be a clear abuse of the legal process, the Calcutta High Court recently observed. [Tushar Manna v. Ananda Sarkar].The Court, therefore, quashed a criminal case against a debt manager over a visit made to recover pending credit card dues from a customer. Justice Shampa Dutt (Paul) quashed the case after noting that the outstanding dues of the customer was admitted and that the bank manager had acted in line with his official duties and as per the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) guidelines..“If every Authorised Officer of a bank/institution has to face criminal charges leveled by a defaulter for acting in accordance with law, then it is clearly an abuse of the process of law and such proceeding should not be allowed to continue in the interest of justice,” the Court observed..The judgment was passed on a petition filed by a debt manager of ICICI Bank. As recounted in the Court’s judgment, the bank manager had visited the customer’s house in December 2019 to recover credit card dues. The bank manager claimed that the customer had racked up huge bills on his credit card, but neglected to pay back the money. Only a fraction of outstanding dues were paid, the bank official claimed.Following the visit, the customer had filed a criminal case against the ICICI bank manager as well as other agents of ICICI Bank and the HDFC Bank alleging the commission of various offences including criminal intimidation, criminal trespass, and extortion.The customer also claimed that ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank had debited huge charges such as overdue charges, over-limit fees, late fees, finance charges, interest, and processing fees and had violated RBI guidelines.The ICICI bank debt manager eventually moved the High Court to quash the criminal case against him. The bank official contended that the criminal case was a malicious and frivolous attempt made by the defaulter to evade the payment of outstanding dues..In a judgment passed earlier this month, the Court allowed the bank official’s plea on finding that the official had not acted in any unlawful manner.“The said act of the petitioner is part of his job and the time of going to the petitioner's house is also appropriate. Considering the time to be 2pm, it is apparent that the petitioner did not intend to act in an unlawful manner,” the Court said.Advocates Dipanjan Dutt, Surojit Saha, Sonia Nandy, and Rajiv Kumar appeared for the bank official..[Read Judgment]