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2021 (10) TMI 898 - HC - Benami PropertyBenami transaction - claim on FD amount - Transfer of interest on FD to stranger - whether such deposits are permissible under the Banking Regulations? - Legal requirement that the Bank has to get a consent from a third party to the contract for the purpose of setting the amounts due under the fixed deposit account with the petitioner - order of the Ombudsman that interest is being credited to the 5th respondent and the petitioner had not objected to the same - Can a public sector Nationalised Bank, refuse to pay the proceeds of a fixed deposit, to the holder of the deposit, on the ground that a consent is required from a person from whose account the amount for opening the fixed deposit account was debited? - HELD THAT:- As the relief claimed in the writ petition does not involve any detailed analysis of disputed facts. As the 1st respondent Bank is a debtor of the petitioner, with regard to amounts held in fixed deposit, the Bank cannot have a stand that they will not pay the amounts due on maturity of the fixed deposit to the deposit holder. The monetary claims if any, of the 5th respondent against the petitioner, are not matters on which the 1st respondent Bank, which is a public sector bank, can intermeddle. It is for the 5th respondent to agitate such claims in appropriate proceedings. Admittedly, the 5th respondent who claims to have advanced money to the petitioner has not initiated any legal proceedings for realisation of the same, even after all these years. So also, the 1st respondent cannot transfer any funds that accrue to the fixed deposit of the petitioner, to any stranger, so long as there are no specific instructions to that effect from the petitioner. The petitioner has specifically pleaded that they have not issued any such instructions. The Bank has not produced any instructions issued either by the petitioner or any other person authorised by the petitioner to transfer the interest accrued on the fixed deposit to the 5th respondent. The Bank could not have acted on instructions of the 5th respondent, since the 5th respondent is a stranger to the contract. In view of the authoritative pronouncements of the Apex Court which have been extracted above and that of a Division Bench of this Court that the Bank owes a public duty to pay the amounts due on a fixed deposit which has matured, I am of the opinion that the writ petition is maintainable and the petitioner is entitled to the relief prayed for. In the result, the writ petition is allowed. The 1st respondent is directed to pay the maturity value of Ext.P3 Fixed Deposit with the applicable interest as per the Reserve Bank of India Circulars from the date of deposit, to the petitioner within two weeks from the date of receipt of this judgment. Ext.P3 order of the Ombudsman is set aside.
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