A consumer court ordered ITC Limited to pay Rs.1 lakh to customer as a compensation. For those not aware of the situation, the petitioner, P Dillibabu of Chennai, accused the company of defrauding its consumers to the tune of about 30 lakh per day.
The allegation was based on an incident that occurred in December 2021. Dillibabu, who was visiting Manali, bought two dozen ‘Sun Feast Marie Light’ biscuits from a retail outlet, according to a report of the Times of India.
When he opened the packets, he discovered one biscuit less in what the packaging advertised as a 16-biscuit pack.
He addressed both the retailer and ITC for an explanation, but neither provided one. In his complaint, Dillibabu stated that each biscuit cost 75 paise and that the company produced roughly 50 lakh packages every day.
According to the complaint, back-of-the-envelope calculations indicated that the Kolkata-based firm was defrauding the people of Rs 29 lakh every day. ITC maintained in court that the particular product was sold only on the basis of its weight, not the number of units contained within it. It stated that the advertised net weight of the goods in this case was 76 gram.
The committee, on the other hand, investigated it and discovered that it weighed only 74 gram. The respondent’s counsel cited the Legal Metrology Rules, 2011, which allow for a maximum acceptable mistake of 4.5 gram for pre-packaged goods; however, the judge disagreed, stating that this was only applicable to ‘volatile’ items.
On August 29, the court found ITC guilty of ‘unfair commercial practices,’ ordering it to stop selling that particular batch of biscuits. In addition, the judge ordered the firm to pay the consumer 1 lakh in compensation.