The district consumer court in its recent order directed the service provider to pay Rs 5000 towards the mental trauma, and physical and financial losses incurred by Subhash Kharat and Rs 1000 as litigation expenses.
Kharat on June 1 last had applied to Reliance Communications seeking conversion of his SIM card from CDMA to GSM mode. However, according to the complainant, the activation did not happen even after 25 days and in the meantime his CDMA card was deactivated.
Kharat claimed in his petition that since he was not reachable, one of his clients Sanjay Chouhan, who was arrested by police, could not reach him and was jailed. The lawyer said that he had suffered a monetary loss of around Rs 1 lakh to Rs 1.5 lakhs as his SIM card remained nonoperational. He approached the Reliance Communications for the same several times but the company did not not pay any heed to his complaints.
Kharat then approached the consumer forum seeking a compensation of Rs 1.50 lakh on account of the losses, besides Rs 3500 towards notice charges and Rs 15,000 as legal expenses from the company.
The forum, headed by president R B Somani and member Jyoti Iyer, held that the service provider was responsible for deficiency in services but held that the advocate had failed to prove the losses he suffered on account of nonoperation of the SIM card.