A 11-year-old debate in the Kozhikode Consumer Redressal Forum on what really happened at the cashier’s cabin of a cooperative urban bank here on the morning of September 14, 2001, has finally been laid to rest.
On that day, Rs.3.5 lakh had mysteriously disappeared from the cashier’s cabin during banking hours in the few minutes he had left his workplace to have a private chat with the branch manager of the busy Calicut Cooperative Urban Bank located at Kallai Road.
A police case was filed after an anonymous customer testified that he was witness to a “stranger stealthily entering the cashier’s cabin to commit the theft”.
Matters however reached a high point when the bank’s insurer, The New India Assurance Company Ltd at Nadakkavu here, refused to indemnify the loss, saying what happened was plain theft and did not amount to burglary or housebreaking, for which the insurance policy was taken.
Burglary or housebreaking, the insurer reasoned, necessarily requires violence like “demolishing the cashier’s door or breaking his lock without his permission, etc”. Nothing like that happened on September 14. New India Assurance had simply closed the file as ‘no claim’.
In 2002, the bank, acting through its branch manager, approached the Consumer Court against the insurer.
Most of all, it wanted finality on what to call the incident — theft or burglary — that occurred on September 14.
Bank's explanation
In court, the bank explained to a Bench led by Forum President G. Yadunadhan that its cashier deals with lakhs of rupees everyday during banking hours. It said the insurance policy was taken, as there was “always a possibility of theft, burglary, housebreaking, etc, on huge amount of money kept in the bank”.
Pooh-poohing the insurance company’s refusal to honour the claim under the policy, the bank argued in court that the “theft occurred as a result of an unknown thief making entry into the cashier’s cabin by illegally opening the door and committing theft of currency bundles”. Wasn’t this violence enough? the bank sought to know.
It said the rejection of the claim by the insurance company was “illegal and unjustifiable”.
In its turn, the insurance company contended that the theft happened due to the negligence of the cashier. It went on to impute that the cashier may even have lent direct or indirect assistance to the crime.
In its recent order, the consumer court went on to re-construct the happenings of the fateful morning to conclude that the money was indeed stolen, possibly with the assistance of an insider.
And to buttress this point, the Bench pointed to how the bank itself had conducted an internal enquiry into the incident.
The probe had ended with the cashier being asked to repay the entire amount lost.
The court went on to squarely blame the bank, observing that “it is the duty of the insured to take all reasonable steps to safeguard the property insured against accidental loss or damage.”
Giving the insurance company a clean chit, the court put an end to the debate of what really happened on the morning of September 14.
