The judgment was given by a bench consisting of CDRF president K D Desai, M G Seth and Leena Desai on an application filed by Consumer Education and Research Society (CERS) and buyer of the vehicle, Mahesh Patel. The applicants had stated that the vehicle was not performing well and could not be repaired even after repeated visits to the service station of the dealer. Patel had purchased a Maruti Zen (GJ-1PP-731) from Cargo Motors (Gujarat) Limited on September 7, 1995. However, the car started giving trouble soon after its purchase. The car had slow pick-up, made a lot of noise and did not take load when the air conditioner (AC) was turned on.

When Patel approached the authorised service station to get the defects rectified, he was told to wait till the first free service. The problem persisted even after the service and Patel was told that it would be dealt with in the second service. However, the problem persisted even after the second and the third free service despite it being brought to the notice of the service centre. Following this, Patel approached CERS which wrote a letter to the dealer asking him to look into the matter.

In response, Patel was assured that the vehicle would be repaired at the main workshop of the dealer. The vehicle was taken there on a couple of occasions, but with no positive results. Eventually, CERS and Patel moved the CDRF on March 15, 1997 asking for replacement of the car or its engine or refund the price of the car with 18 per cent interest.

The order stated that the manufacturer should not have sold a product which suffered from major manufacturing structural defects. The respondents were ordered to replace the car within six weeks.