NEW DELHI: For Rahul Garg, all hopes of making his wedding a memorable one were shattered because his bride-to-be was delivered a faulty, ill-fitting lehenga by a shop in Chandni Chowk.
The couple bought the lehenga from M/s Roop Shingaar that the bride-to-be was to wear on her wedding on August 13, 2008. But she discovered that it was short by two inches and had an uneven hem. Despite it being sent for alteration, the dress came back without any changes, and she was forced to wear it for her wedding, much to the couple’s embarrassment.
Months after their wedding ceremony, the couple approached the shop owners in Chandni Chowk to rectify the dress, which the shop refused to do citing extra work load and shortage of staff.
An exasperated Rahul Garg then approached the District Consumer Court seeking a refund of `14,200—the lehenga’s cost—plus a compensation of `50,000. After the court failed to grant them relief, Rahul filed an appeal before the Delhi State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission, which directed the shop owners to pay `80,000 for mental agony and embarrassment caused to the couple.
The commission also slapped a fine of `5 lakh on the shop for wasting judicial time and said, “Superior courts have time and again lamented over huge money spent by the government, hour-wise on litigations by the District Courts and the High Courts… A conservative estimate would show that at least `5 lakh has been spent on judicial time devoted to the present litigation. Such a huge expenditure on a petty litigation is nothing but painful.”