AHMEDABAD: A Tata-authorised service centre in Ahmedabad has been ordered to pay Rs 60,000 in compensation and litigation costs after a customer’s FASTag recorded a toll transaction in Haryana while his accident-damaged car was supposed to be at the workshop for repairs.The Gujarat State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission held Riya Autolink, the authorised Tata service centre in Bopal, guilty of deficiency in service after rejecting its claim that it had not taken the vehicle outside the workshop.The dispute began when Dr Dinesh Thakur, who bought the car in 2020, left it at the workshop on August 5, 2023, following an accident, before travelling abroad. On September 5, he received a FASTag alert informing him that Rs 80 had been deducted after the vehicle’s tag was used at Daula Toll Plaza at Kherki on the Jaipur-Delhi highway on September 4.The transaction raised questions about how the car could have reached a toll plaza in Haryana, hundreds of kilometres from Ahmedabad, while it was supposed to be in the service centre’s custody.Thakur initially approached the Ahmedabad District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission, which directed a refund of the Rs 80 toll deduction but did not award any compensation. He subsequently appealed before the state commission, seeking damages from the service centre for allegedly allowing his vehicle to be moved without his permission.Riya Autolink denied taking the car outside the workshop and relied on its gate-pass records to support its defence. It also argued that a FASTag deduction, by itself, could not establish that the vehicle had been moved by the workshop.The state commission, however, was not convinced. It said the FASTag transaction certificate and fitment certificate established that the tag linked to Thakur’s vehicle had been used at the Haryana toll plaza.Observing that the service centre’s gate-pass records were “insufficient by themselves to conclusively establish that the vehicle was never moved outside the workshop”, the commission said the documentary evidence supported Thakur’s contention that his vehicle’s FASTag had been recorded at Kherki Daula Plaza on September 4, 2023, with Rs 80 deducted towards toll charges.The commission ordered Riya Autolink to pay Rs 50,000 as compensation for deficiency in service and another Rs 10,000 towards litigation costs, taking the total payout to Rs 60,000.
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