STATE TIMES NEWS
JAMMU: In a landmark judgment passed here for the first time in the Indian history against a telecom service provider, the District Consumer Forum Jammu has directed Bharti Airtel to compensate a Jammu based scribe for causing harassment, mental agony and inconvenience.
Shahzad Azeem District and Sessions Judge, who is the President of the Forum and Veena Julmaria, Advocate as member of the Forum directed Bharti Airtel to compensate its consumer for unfair trade practice by paying Rs 20,000 as compensation besides Rs 5000 quantified towards litigation charges.
The direction came in response to a petition filed by one Bharat Bhushan, an accredited journalist through Advocate Vishal Kapur alleging that since he was unable to pay the meager bill of amount Rs 819 against his post paid number 9797637828 on account of ill health, the service provider i.e., Bharti Airtel in violation of all norms made calls to some of his friends and his employer informing them about his overdue bill.
The complainant was surprised to know that Bharti Airtel, through its employees/agents started calling his friends and even employer to persuade them to call complainant and ask him to pay the bill. Complainant’s reputation was shattered before his friends as they were told different things like, “what type of person is he, who could not even afford to pay a telephone bill of meager amount”, “what kind of friends do you have who do not even pay their telephone bills”, etc. Stating the method of recovery as illegal and facing humiliation before the friends by Bharti Airtel, the compliant has filed a defamation of Rs 5 lakh against the company.
Advocate Vishal Kapur while arguing convinced the Court that the method adopted by the service provider has caused harassment, mental agony and disrepute to his client and he was harassed by numerous calls for payment of bill and he was also harassed indirectly by way of ‘Proxy Stalking’, the term used to describe harassment of an individual by means of harassing others connected with the individual, knowing that this behaviour will affect the victim as well as the others connected to him.
After hearing the facts put forth by Advocate Vishal Kapur, the Court observed that the complainant would be definitely entitled to compensation for harassment, mental agony and inconvenience. JNF