Mumbai: The Bombay high court has held that in the situation wherein a respondent is evading physical service of a notice to attend court, a notice sent over WhatsApp will be deemed to have been serviced if the same has been seen and read by the respondent.
The order was passed by a bench of Justice Gautam Patel after the State Bank of India (SBI) cards and payments section informed the court that after they had failed to issue a physical notice to the respondent, as his whereabouts were not known, they had issued the notice as well as an attachment of the same through WhatsApp which he had opened and read. The court accepted it and termed the notice thus issued as absolute.
The bench of justice Patel was hearing the execution application of the SBI department which had a decree for recovery against Rohidas Jadhav. The applicant/claimant had issued a notice to Jadhav through its authorized officer Fatema Kalyanwala over Whatsapp to attend court on June 11, 2018 with regards to the execution application case. SBI informed the court that they had resorted to serving Jadhav the notice over Whatsapp after they had been unable to service it to him physically as he was evading service.
In their submissions, SBI informed the court that after the notice was serviced to Jadhav the icon indicators clearly showed that not only was the message and its attachment delivered to the respondent’s number but that both were opened.
The bench accepted the same and said that the notice was absolute and said it was sufficient to service the notice under Order XXI Rule 22 of the Code of Civil Procedure 1908. The bench further directed SBI to furnish the rental address which they had managed to trace to the authorities so that a warrant if necessary could be issued against Jadhav.
