According to this Article in ET today, Yes Bank has started blaming RPG Life Sciences for the Rs 2.41 crore fraud that has been reported to have been committed a few days back.
Naavi.org has discussed several times the issue of the liability of Banks in such online fraud cases the latest being the article posted here on 18th instant.
The matter has been discussed and settled first in the S.Umashankar Vs ICICI Bank case (presently on appeal) with the Adjudicator of Tamil Nadu as well as the recent case of the Adjudicator of Maharashtra against Punjab National bank.
Though Banks have been using their money power to delay the judicial process by stalling the appointment of the Chair person for the Cyber Appelate Tribunal, there are enough judicial views even from abroad to hold categorically that liabilities in such cases lies only with the Bank and not with the customer. This holds good even in the case of a fraud from some of the employees of the customer as per previous Supreme Court judgement in respect of forgeries in Bank.
RPG should therefore not allow Yes Bank to bully them down. Even if the Bank takes the case to the Supreme Court, RPG should fight and obtain justice since most other victims are unable to carry on the legal fight with the Banks.
It is however possible that in this incident Yes Bank may buckle down in view of the strength of the RPG group. Even if therefore no precedent is set in a Court of law, we can expect an implied acceptance from Yes Bank that the fraud liability is on the Bank and not on the Customer.
We may recall the RBI’s Internet Banking Guidelines, the GGWG report and the Damodaran Committee report which all have held that liability for phishing lies with the Bank.
Naavi
