Public bank asked to pay compensation for flaw in their cyber security system
Kolkata: A nationalised bank has been instructed by the cyber adjudicator to compensate a man for loss of huge amounts of money due to a flaw in their security system.
During December in 2015, a businessman Harish Chopra of FE block in Salt Lake had taken a loan Rs 20 lakh in his Cash Credit bank account of Oriental Bank Commerce which is now Punjab National Bank (PNB). It is alleged that after a few days the money was transferred in four Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) transactions without Chopra's consent. He had not received any One Time Password (OTP) for any of the transactions. But for the first and third transactions, Chopra received two messages from the bank
about the withdrawal.
Immediately Chopra contacted the bank branch and informed them about the fraudulent transactions. Initially the bank authority allegedly did not take the matter seriously. However the alerts for the two transactions he received were found useful to block Rs 10 lakh at a branch of State Bank of India in Bhopal.
Chopra's lawyer Bibhas Chatterjee who is also an Cyber expert alleged that when his client approached the bank, the authorities told him that it was not their fault. Later Chopra lodged a complaint at the Bidhannagar Cyber Crime police station. After registering a case, cops started a probe and finally disposed of it as they are unable to find the accused persons. However, in the final report given by the police it was mentioned that no flaw was found on behalf of Chopra.
Despite filing a report it was not accepted and the bank continued charging the interest Chopra appealed before the Cyber Adjudicator of Bengal. After several hearings, the bank admitted that during a certain period their system was not working fully as it was unable to store the IP address of the customer using internet banking.
On Tuesday the Cyber Adjudicator of Bengal ordered the PNB to return the entire interest amount which is around Rs seven lakh to Chopra along with an amount of Rs 40 thousand as compensation. Also it has been ordered that the Rs 10 lakh which was blocked and kept at the SBI of Bhopal must be returned to the PNB.
