The Delhi High Court was dealing with a petition under Article 227 of the Constitution, impugning the order by the District Judge, whereby show cause notice had been issued to the petitioner ICICI Bank for serving the summons through WhatsApp.
The facts of the case were that the respondent had approached the bank for a car loan. Later, she defaulted in payment of monthly instalments. The plaintiff filed a commercial suit for recovery against respondent.
The Commercial Court passed summons order. In terms of the same, the plaintiff took steps for affecting service on the defendant through ordinary process as well as speed post. In addition to the service through the above modes, the plaintiff also sent the photograph of the summons to the defendant by WhatsApp since the plaintiff had the phone number of the defendant provided in the loan documents.
When the matter came up before the Commercial Court, the defendant contended that she had received a private notice of appearance through WhatsApp and had not received any notice/summons from the Court. The Court observed that ICICI has adopted this kind of practice on a regular basis for the reasons best known to it and it amounts to over reaching the judicial system. The Court said, “No party has a right to start a parallel system along with the judicial proceedings.” The Court passed the impugned order issuing show cause notice to the plaintiff as to why criminal contempt proceedings be not initiated against the plaintiff.
The Delhi High Court observed that there was no reason for the Commercial Court to issue show cause for initiating criminal contempt against the Bank. The photograph of the summons was sent through WhatsApp only as an additional measure so as to ensure the appearance of the defendant. There is nothing malafide in the same and it cannot be said that that was an attempt to overreach the judicial proceedings.
Thus, the High Court held that the order passed by the Commercial Court suffered from patent illegality and was also without jurisdiction, hence, liable to be set aside.
Case title: ICICI Bank Limited v. Rashmi Sharma
Judgement Date: 12th January 2022
Bench: Justice Amit Bansal
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