Innocent Customers Being Duped Of Substantial Sums Of Money: Delhi High Court Issues Notices To 24 Banks

The Delhi High Court has issued notices to 24 Banks saying the innocent customers being duped of substantial sums of money. It has also directed the Google to nominate an official to communicate with the Cyber Cell, Delhi Police for providing them with information needed with respect to the fraudulent websites.

The Court was dealing with a batch of pleas relating to domain names being registered by unknown third parties infringing trademark right of various brand owners and implementation of court orders by the Domain Name Registrars (DNRs).

A Single Bench of Justice Prathiba M. Singh ordered, “In view of the above stand of the Cyber Cell, it is deemed appropriate to issue notices to nominated counsels of all the banks who are nominated by the Delhi High Court, so as to evolve a method for ensuring that queries by the police authorities are replied to in a diligent and efficient manner, as it involves innocent customers being duped of substantial sums of money. The names of the nominated counsel to whom notice is directed to be issued by the Registry, without process fee, is annexed as Annexure A-1.”

Advocate Anirudh Bakhru represented the plaintiff while Senior Advocates Dayan Krishnan, Darpan Wadhwa, and Rajshekhar Rao, CGSC Harish V. Shankar and ASC Hetu Arora Sethi represented the defendants.

From time to time, various directions were passed by the High Court in respect of blocking and locking of the infringing domain names, and implementation of court orders by various DNRs which may or may not be located in India. The ASC placed on record a written note of arguments in respect of the challenges faced by the Cyber Cell of the Delhi Police in investigation. The said challenges were as under:

i. Delay by Banks in replying to emails and information sought by the Cyber Cell.

ii. Domain Name Registrars (DNRs) and intermediaries who are hosting the website not providing proper details of the Registrants in respect of cloud services and other services availed by them.

iii. Use of VOIP, VPN, etc. by fraudsters to avoid detection.

iv. Non-providing of information by Google even though fake websites have booked AdWords through Google Ads programme.

The High Court in the above regard directed, “Insofar as Google is concerned, Google LLC is directed to nominate one official who would communicate with the Cyber Cell, Delhi Police and provide them the information that they would need in respect of the fraudulent websites and render any other cooperation that may be needed to investigate the cases.”

Furthermore, the Court said, “Insofar as CS(COMM)-303/2022 is concerned, Ms. Sethi, ld. Counsel submits that the request has been sent for information from Mumbai Police as on 19th September, 2023. Let the status report be placed on record.”

Accordingly, the High Court listed the case on November 24, 2023.

Cause Title- Dabur India Limited v. Ashok Kumar and Ors. (Neutral Citation: 2023:DHC:7129)

Click here to read/download the Order