Mumbai: 2 banks to pay Rs 30,000 as Rs 10,000 ‘withdrawn’ but not dispensed

MUMBAI: A consumer forum has brought to book Canara Bank and Union Bank of India and told them to pay a compensation of around Rs 30,000 to a Mumbai resident, after Rs 10,000 that he tried to withdraw from an ATM in Uttar Pradesh was debited from his account but was not dispensed. The forum reprimanded Union Bank for failing to produce CCTV footage of the ATM.The bank claimed the footage had been deleted.
"There must be a video recording of the person doing a transaction on the ATM, and who is collecting the money dispensed from the ATM, apart from documentary entries made by the centralized system in respect of disbursement of money from the ATM," the forum asserted.

It said that by submitting CCTV footage, the banks could have substantiated their claims that the transaction by the complainant, Achchelal Viswakarma, was successful.
"Thus, this is one part of negligence and deficiency in services on the part of the banks towards the complainant of not producing CCTV footage, by which it could have been traced out that really the complainant had received or accepted the money dispensed from the ATM," the forum said.
Vishwakarma submitted a complaint before South Mumbai District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum on September 5, 2012.
He said in the complaint that on March 15, 2012, he went to the Union Bank ATM at Shahganj, Jaunpur district, and used his Canara Bank debit card to withdraw Rs10,000. He said that after the ATM did not dispense the money, he waited for a while, and then cancelled the transaction.
Vishwakarma stated that he immediately tried to withdraw Rs5,000. This time, the ATM dispensed the money. He said that later, through bank records, he got to know that the Rs10,000 transaction was shown as successful, even though it had failed.
The banks denied the allegations and iterated that the records showed that the transaction was successful.