In this series, we will present a case to you. You be the judge. You don’t need to know the law or apply it. What judgement will you give, as a citizen member of the jury, and why? You can express your ideas in the comments section.
Shivani ji is a senior citizen who lives alone in Bhopal. One day, she called up Varsha, her daughter, frantically. Varsha lived in Delhi.
“Varsha, all the money from my account is gone!”
“How, ma? What’s happened?”
“I was selling that old chair beta. Someone called me up and said to share an OTP so they can transfer money to my account. As soon as I did that, I got a message saying that the money has been transferred. But the amount was my bank balance! Not the 800 rs that they were supposed to pay me!”
Varsha realised that her mother had just been conned in a cybercrime.
She asked her mother to relax. Then, she googled.
The first step was to file an FIR for cybercrime. She somehow managed that.
Then, she found out about insurance. Thankfully, her mother’s bank provided this insurance by default to all senior citizens. This insurance covers the loss in the event of a cyber fraud.
She heaved a huge sigh of relief and applied for insurance.
However, two weeks later, Shivani ji called up Varsha again in tears.
“Varsha, they have rejected the claim. They said that it is not fraud because I myself gave the OTP to the fraudster. Therefore, there is connivance, and I cannot claim damages on this loss.”
Varsha decided to fight the decision in court. She claimed that her mother had been conned into believing that the OTP was to receive money, rather than to give it. Being a senior citizen, she was vulnerable, and her vulnerability had been exploited.
As a member of the jury, or as the judge, what would you decide, and why?
I would say that it is not Shivani ji’s fault. She was targeted and she didn’t know about cybercrime or had no idea how this would work. She didnt know that whatever the OTP was was not to be shared