Perils of keeping surplus money in bank accounts

In the 1970s, Jack, a United States (US) citizen, wanted to marry Anna, a citizen of the Communist Soviet Union.

- HARSH ROONGTA

To get approval, Jack was asked to get a document from the US authorities certifying he was not married. This was a clever bureaucratic ploy for rejecting his application. Getting the US authorities to certify a negative fact that Jack was not married-was an impossible task.

I recalled this story while reading a Mumbai High Court decision requiring a bank to refund ₹77 lakh that had been debited from a company called PSAPL's bank account without authorisation.

On October 2, 2022, PSAPL received 13 SMS messages notifying it of the transfer of 77 lakh from its account to unknown parties. The beneficiaries were not known to PSAPL and it had not added them as beneficiaries. Aside from the SMS alerts, it had received no other communication from the bank.