Gurugram:
In a case related to dog bite of a resident, the district consumer forum has slapped a fine of nearly ₹ 4 lakh on the management of a gated housing society and its security agency in Gurugram.
The court of Sanjeev Jindal said that The Magnolias management and the security agency were fined for deficiency in service that caused mental agony to the victim, a girl child, and her family.
The court also asked the management, including society president, estate manager and secretary, to pay an additional 9 percent interest since the date of admission of the case to the court and legal expenses of around ₹ 20,000 to fully compensate the victim.
According to the complaint filed by Pankaj Aggarwal in September last year, he lived as tenant in The Magnolias, DLF City, with his family on first floor.
The complaint read: “As per the rent agreement, I paid ₹ 3 lakh as rent and ₹ 1 lakh as maintenance charges monthly. It was in February 2020 that my daughter, Shivi, took a lift to go to 22nd floor to meet her uncle. On the 10th floor, a servant of Rakesh Kapoor, one of the accused, entered the lift with a dog.”
Mr Aggarwal said that the dog was not chained. “It jumped on my daughter and bit her and left her traumatized. The servant left my child there and went away with the pet. She somehow managed to reach her uncle’s flat from where we took her to hospital. She could not attend school for two weeks, was confined to home and traumatized for life,” the complaint read.
After hearing the arguments, the consumer court held all six accused guilty and ordered a compensation of ₹ 3.80 lakh to the victim.
The court in its order said that while the fine amount might sound too much to many, it was just three months of the society’s maintenance charges.
