Your morning, infact your whole day gets spoilt/ruined. You are totally perturbed and harassed. You try to ring up the advocate on the given number. Either no response or the telephone is found switched off. After a day or two you again get a similar call. Ultimately, after running from pillar to post, you find out that it was in connection with a telephone/mobile bill, which you had already paid, but remained outstanding in their accounts due to their own fault/lapses.

           A friend of mine recently got a call saying that he is speaking from a particular police station in Delhi. The person on the other side threatened him and said that he should stay at home as they were coming to arrest him, as they had received non-bailable warrants from Ahmedabad in a case of Section 420 IPC against him. On pleading, the person on the other side tells him to go to the office of one of the telecom operators/service providers, and go and talk to the people over there. When the friend went and showed to them the details of payments extra already made by him, they sheepishly said – `Sahib galti ho gai', and further – `you need not worry now in this regard. '

             What is all this? Does law provide for the same? Thousands of calls of this kind are being made/ received every day and the innocent people/consumers are thoroughly harassed and tortured. Threats of prosecution and arrest are being extended, the same being unlawful, illegal and totally unauthorized by law. Needless to say that this has been done by the people hired by the big and mighty service providers/loan givers extra. How does one stop this menace?

               The law provides for a procedure for recovery of amount (s) due, if any. Why this procedure is not being followed/adopted, and why such dubious/illegal ways and means are resorted to, which includes false impersonation, criminal intimidation etc., which offences are punishable under the law. The poor and helpless individuals/consumers are made to suffer and sometimes they are made to pay more than what is due. They are unable to fight against the giants and the people hired by these giants. In the circumstances they succumb to their illegal /unjustified demand(s).

            Do the authorities/legal administration/police know about this and are taking appropriate steps in this regard? If not, shouldn’t the same be brought to their knowledge and they take immediate and necessary steps, including bringing to book the persons and companies who are involved in such activities? Shouldn’t a PIL be filed in this connection?