'Frivolous' ! Kerala HC Dismisses PIL Alleging Customer Data Leakage Due To Security Lapse At SBI [Read Judgment]

The Kerala High Court came down heavily on a person who filed a Public Interest Litigation alleging there are serious lapses by the State Bank of India which resulted in customer data leakage and disruption of online services.

Referring to a newspaper report in this regard, Shaheer Ali @ Shaheer Chingath, filed a PIL and sought investigation by an independent agency, and a further direction on the General Manager of the SBI to remit Rs.5 Crore to the Kerala State Legal Services Authority [KELSA].

In its counter affidavit, the bank termed the allegations as 'false and irresponsible' and said that the customers details are fully secure the servers maintained by the SBI, and there are enough inbuilt safeguards in the conveyance of data, for the usual banking transactions.

As the petitioner couldn't indicate any basis for his allegation that the data of the customers was compromised by the failure of the SBI authorities, the court said that this was a 'frivolous petition filed by a busybody'. The petitioner claims himself to be a social worker and the Co-Ordinator of the National Council for Peoples Right To Information, but he does not indicate any past activity from which one can verify the credential of the litigant, the court added.

Dismissing the PIL, the bench comprising Justice Hrishikesh Roy and Justice AK Jayasankaran Nambiar said:

"Considering the frivolous nature of this PIL and the above ratio in Balwant Singh's case and Tehseen Poonawalla's case [supra], we feel that, while dismissing the PIL, exemplary costs should be imposed so that such litigations, without proper verification of the assertion, are discouraged. Taking note however of the earnest plea raised by the petitioner's lawyer that sympathy be shown since his client belongs to the Below Poverty Line category, we restrain from imposing very heavy cost, and limit the cost amount to Rs.10,000/- [Rupees Ten thousand only]." 

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