Judgment

B.N. MAHAPATRA, J.

This Writ Petition has been filed with a prayer to protect the deposits, investments made by members of the Petitioner-Trust and similarly situated other investors and to issue a writ of mandamus and/or any other appropriate writ/order/direction to opposite parties 2 to 7-Banks to give refund and recovery of the investments/deposits made by the public investors on due production of their receipts.

2. Petitioners’ case in a nutshell is that petitioner No.1 in the writ petition is a registered Trust of duped and gullible thousands and thousands of investors of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, who have invested their money with M/s Fine Indisales Pvt. Ltd. through opposite party-Banks, i.e., ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, YES Bank and IDBI Bank (opposite parties 2 to 6). Petitioner No.2 is the President of petitioner No.1-Trust. Members of the Trust, who are the investors, are poor people of the society working as rickshaw pullers, taxi drivers, shopkeepers, Class-IV employees of private companies, hotels and other establishments, tea-shop owners, cabin holders etc., who invested their life savings with a hope of getting effective and speedy return from the Company. The deposits made by these umpteen number of investors with opposite party Nos. 2 to 6-Banks were defreezed by the statutory orders under Section 102 of the Code of Criminal Procedure by the Crimes Department of the State of Odisha and presently the investments/deposits of these investors are in the lawful custody of learned S.D.J.M., Balasore. Opposite party No.7-M/s Fine Indisales Pvt. Ltd. (for short ‘the Company’), a Company registered under the Companies Act, promoted a multi-level marketing business and floated the Scheme/Project on the Website without obtaining any permission from the Reserve Bank of India. The said Company is a non-banking financial Company. The Company represented on the Website that its registered office is in Uttar Pradesh and Corporate office in Mumbai. Members of the Trust being enamored by the brochures and prospectus published on the website applied for distributorship/ membership of the said Company and each one deposited/subscribed Rs.10,000/-to Rs.2,50,000/-for purchase of the purported product as published on the website in opposite parties 2 to 6-Banks in the name of opposite party No.7-Company. The deposits were multiples of Rs.10,000/-, Rs.20,000/-, Rs.40,000/-, Rs.50,000/-, Rs.80,000/-and Rs.1,70,000/-. Opposite party No.7-Company failed to comply with the terms of the Scheme and contract till the date of filing of writ petition while accepting such deposit. The Company also failed to send any product or benefits to its members and other similarly situated investors/depositors. The Company also entered into an agreement of distributorship with the members/distributors/investors. The amount deposited and/or invested by the Trust and its members is more than Rs.100.00 crores and the petitioners understand which they verily believe to be true that all over India such deposits are more than thousands of crores. Agreement of the said Company amounts to a scam involving lakhs of gullible depositors all over India. The Reserve Bank of India on or about 01.08.2009 issued Circular to all scheduled Commercial Banks that opposite party No.7 Company and six other Companies are not non-Banking financial organization as defined under Section 45 of the Reserve Bank of India Act and none of these Companies had been issued with a certificate to conduct non-banking financial activity.

3. One Niranjan Sahoo of Balasore district of the State of Odisha being aggrieved by the malicious and fraudulent conduct of the said Company lodged an F.I.R. on 17.07.2009 in Sahadev Khunta Police Station in the district of Balasore, which has been registered as P.S. Case No.118 dated 17.07.2009 under Sections 406/420/468/471/34, IPC and Sections 4, 5, and 6 of Prize Chits and Money Circulation Scheme (Banning) Act, 1978 (for s