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Judgment
The present challenge has been preferred against an order whereby ad interim prayer for injunction made by the plaintiff/appellant was refused. The plaintiff/appellant seeks to make out a case of being a victim of credit card fraud. Learned counsel submits that at 1.15 p.m. on the fateful day, the plaintiff/appellant reported the incident upon first discovering that he was being swindled on his credit card. Even thereafter, the offending acts of siphoning off amounts from his credit card account continued at least for four minutes thereafter, till 1.19 p.m.
Learned counsel places reliance on the contract between the parties, in particular, Clauses 6 and 7 thereof, which indicates that a customer’s entitlement to zero liability shall arise where the unauthorised transaction occurs in certain events, including contributory fraud/negligence/deficiency on the part of the bank (irrespective of whether or not the transaction is reported by the customer) and third party breach where the deficiency lies neither with the bank nor with the customer but elsewhere in the system, and the customer notifies the bank within three working days of receiving the communication from the bank regarding the unauthorised transaction.
Again, in Clause 7(i), it is provided that a customer shall be liable for loss occurring due to unauthorised transactions in cases where the loss is due to negligence by a customer, such as where he has shared the payment credentials, in which case the customer will bear the entire loss until he reports the unauthorised transaction to the bank. Any loss occurring after the reporting of the unauthorised transaction shall be borne by the bank.
Learned counsel submits that in the present case, the offending acts of siphoning off amounts from the credit card account of the appellant continued even after the appellant/customer reported the incident to the bank and, as such, the provisions of Clause 7(i) will be applicable to the extent that any loss occurring thereafter shall not be borne by the appellant but the bank.
Be that as it may, we find that the language in which the injunction prayer was couched in the trial court tantamounted to seeking an injunction restraining the defendant/bank from initiating a legal action for money claim against the plaintiff / appellant.
Such an injunction cannot be granted within the contemplation of the Specific Relief Act, 1963.
The injunction sought was, in effect, for restraining the defendant nos. 1 and 2 from demanding the disputed monetary amounts from the plaintiff or from compelling him to pay the amounts, which can only be done by filing a proper money suit. Thus, the ad interim injunction, if granted at this stage, would amount to violate the provisions of the 1963 Act to the extent that the defendant nos. 1 and 2 would be restrained from instituting a legal action before a court/statutory forum.
Even otherwise, certain amount of foundational facts are required to be proved in order to invoke the clauses of the contract between the bank and the appellant which are relied on, which can only be done upon exchange of affidavits in connection with the injunction application in the least.
Hence, we do not find any reason to interfere at this stage.
FMA 919 of 2026 is dismissed under Order XLI Rule 11 of the Code of Civil Procedure.
CAN 1 of 2026 is also consequentially dismissed.
We make it clear that the above observations or the observations made in the impugned order shall be treated to be tentative and shall not influence the learned Trial Judge while disposing of the main injunction application.
There will be no order as to costs.
Urgent photostat certified copies of this order, if applied for, be made available to the parties upon compliance with the requisite formalities.