A bank must honor cheques against sufficient funds; failure constitutes negligence and allows for damages under the Consumer Protection Act.

1. The complainant has come up with the present complaint under S.17 of the Consumer Protection Act, 1986, as against Opposite Party Nos. 1 and 2 / Indian Overseas Bank, Chennai, seeking this Commission to direct the Opposite Parties to,
(i) pay a sum of Rs.48.77 lakh to the complainant as compensation for the loss incurred by him due to the deficiency of service and negligence committed by the opposite parties;
(ii) pay a sum of Rs.25 lakh as compensation for the damage caused to the reputation and causing mental anguish and agony suffered by the complainant due to the deficient service of the opposite parties;
(iii) pay a sum of Rs.25 lakh as compensation to the complainant for the consequential damage caused due to the deficient service of the opposite parties by driving away the complainant from his business activity run for his livelihood and sealing his future; and
(iv) pay a sum of Rs.25,000 as costs of the complaint.

2. The case of the complainant, as reflected from the Complaint, in brief, is as follows:
Being a customer of the Opposite Parties / Bank since 1974, for the past 10 years, the complainant has been operating a Savings Bank (SB) Account at the Nungambakkam Branch / 2nd Opposite Party. His wife Mrs.Prema Malini Vasan is also maintaining an SB Account for the same period as that of the complainant with the same Branch. Both of them had invested part of their retirement benefits in Fixed Deposits (FD) with the said Branch and those Amounts had been shifted and invested in shares (Stock Market) from the year 2014 onwards for the livelihood of the complainant and his wife and the share market operations were done through the Banking channel of the Opposite Parties.
Everything went on smoothly till 19.1.2016 and an act of negligence on the part of the Opposite Parties / Bank had brought down the complainant's investment, which was so well established after putting in lot of time and efforts, to the level of scratch. The complainant, for his livelihood, had invested about 1.5 crores by January 2016, and he was reduced to almost a pauper in the same month due to the act of negligence on the part of the Bank.
The complainant was operating S.B. A/c. No. 018301000050000 with the Second Opposite Party as Liquiflo Account with a special feature that the Amounts, over a specified time, lying in the S.B. Account of the complainant, will be automatically transferred to Term Deposit for better rate of interest and whenever situation requires, the Bank, on its own, will bring back funds from such term deposit account to the SB Account to honour the cheques issued by the complainant and for taking Demand Draft, etc. While so, in the course of stock trading, the complainant has been issuing cheques in favour of his Stock Broker - M/s. Angel Broking Private Limited, Mumbai, and received payments by RTGS to the credit of the aforesaid SB Account of the complainant. The complainant used to be allowed for higher exposure in the market on the basis of the collaterals / margin available by the said Stock Broker and the complainant used to pay them interest for the same. In stock trade, the investors have to maintain a percentage of the value of the purchased shares with the broker as margin for each share and if the value of the purchased shares goes below certain level, the brokers are free to call the investors to make good the shortfall in margin. If the client fails, the brokers are free to square off the shares of the investor, enough to make good the margin shortfall at the prevailing rates to saf