Charging over MRP at airports - 10

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On 21st Sep, I submitted a copy of the newspaper article that had details about a recent judgment delivered by the Karnataka Consumer Court against overcharging. But the judge said that he can't take cognizance of a newspaper article and I should get a copy of the actual case judgment at the next hearing. Next hearing date was set for 27th Sep, 2007.

Ok, this was interesting. How do we now go about finding where the judgment was passed? We had no details about the case, no case number, no mention about which court it was handled in. All we knew were the names of the complainant and the O.P. [Digression 1: The stupid newspaper copy writer of that article should be fired. When one writes a case that has public relevance, it makes eminent sense to provide contact details of the complainant for people to contact him regarding the case. At the very least, all details about the case should have been provided like the case number and the name of the Forum which handled the case. We had such a bloody tough time finding the details ourselves, and if we weren't so persistent we wouldn't have managed. And of course, thanks to quite a bit of luck. Anyway, read on... ;)]

There are five locations of the Courts in Bangalore: Sheshadripuram, Cunningham road and KG Road. After the hearing, we talked to various people in the Sheshadripuram court, but they could not remember such a case being handled in this court. [Digression 2: What kind of strange IT city do we live in? Its quite unbelievable that they don't have an online database system in which they can put in a few key words and locate the case details. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.]

Fine, so then we go bitching to the next court on KG Road. Spoke to a guy we had nodding acquaintance with there, but he also said that such a case was not handled by that court. Whew. Nothing else to do, but to go trudging all the way to Cunningham Rd and hope that it was handled by the Courts there. Sh**. We came out of the Court office and were waiting for the lift when lady luck decided to shine on us again. There was a lawyer who had overheard us inside and he asked us what the problem was. We explained, and he said to go back and ask them for the complaint register. That would have a list of every complaint that has been filed. Look backwards day by day, until we find the name of the complainant. Cool, so there was a way. We went back inside and explained what we needed. Lady luck now positively shone on us now. One of the guys suddenly said, no problem, they'll locate it on the database. [Digression 3: Database? Huh? Whats that? They have a bloody online D A T A B A S E? Whatdfuck, and we go donkeying all over town on a working day when I should be in office. ~#@$%^**()#@#!!! and @$#@^%**&)*()#!!!]

Voila! In a few seconds they looked up the key words and retrieved all the case details. I would have jumped off the 6th floor if it turned out that the case has been handled by the Sheshadripuram Court. Turned out that it was in the Cunningham Court. So off we went there next, armed with all the details. The case had been filed in May (after my case) and was disposed off in Aug (before mine!). Thats why I keep saying that next time I will try to get the Cunningham Forum.

There's an amazingly helpful lady in the Cunningham Court, and she got the case file out and we read the judgment. She needed an affidavit from me explaining why I needed a certified copy of this judgment, and why it had relevance for my case. It would take 2 days normally, but she promised to give it to us in a day.

I got the affidavit made from the same notary in Koramangala BDA complex, and my wife submitted it on Monday, and on Tuesday we had the certified copy with us. More power to us, yeah!

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