Cyber shop in state capital furnished fake PAN CARD

Sometime in between April and May, 2021 along with my brother we visited a Cyber shop situated in the heart of Kohima town several times for making PAN CARD as we were urgently in need for opening of our Bank Account. As student we need PAN CARD to open Bank Account for availing scholarship and PAN CARD is in dire need for several other purposes. Initially the shop owner asked us to pay the sum Rs.300/- per PAN CARD and later on he asked us to pay another Rs.50/- to collect our PAN CARD at Kohima otherwise it would go to Tuensang our permanent address. After making payment of the sum of Rs.350/- per CARD we visited the shop even more than ten(10) times as we were urgently in need. The shop owner has endless excuses and sometime he even asked us to submit another passport photo. Then for sometime there was no respond from the shop owner and we had missed several purposes to our benefits.

Finally, in February, 2022 the shop owner furnished us only E-CARD and we waited for smart Card. Just recently when we apply for opening Bank account at ICICI Bank along with our PAN CARD, the Bank had detected our PAN CARD as ‘fake’ and again we could not open our Bank Account. Immediately we informed the shop owner that the PAN CARD furnished to us was found to be fake. He did not deny about this wrong doing. Again we requested him to return our money and to this he agreed with us to return our money. But till date he is not willing to return our money and the shop don’t have any name although it is lying in the heart of the town.

While I was in dilemma and pondering what not to do next, I remembered what my professor Kezhokhoto Savi a renowned social activist(President NVCO) taught me in law college “not to remain silent in case of any cheating or exploitation in the hands of unscrupulous trader as a consumer”. He is one man who had gone to all the district headquarters in Nagaland to spread the message of ‘Consumer Rights’ and appealed every citizen with a powerful slogan – “WAKE UP CONSUMER! WAKE UP”. He taught us with several mechanisms to redress consumer’s grievances.

If we remain silent then we allow unscrupulous traders to take more advantage to exploit the so called – ‘CONSUMER’. With this reminder I became more strong not to remain silent with the co called – ‘Cyber shop’ who had badly cheated me and my brother in furnishing us fake PAN CARD just for some money, yes we are at a loss of money but importantly we had missed several important benefits for not having PAN CARD and the shop owner did not care about our welfare but just to make money from consumer in furnishing ‘FAKE’ PAN CARD. Now I realized if I remain silent then this kind of unscrupulous trader would continue to cheat other citizen/consumer.

This is my sincere appealed to all citizens/consumers not to allow this kind of cheating in our town called – “Smart City”. As our great leader Kezhokhoto Savi had spread a slogan let us all stand for our Consumer Rights keeping in mind – “WAKE UP CONSUMER! WAKE UP.”