A district consumer forum has issued non-bailable arrest warrants against owners of an east Delhi professional training institute for closing shop before completing a course. The two are also charged with assaulting students, forging attendance sheets and not paying compensation to students despite the forum’s order.

The East District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum ordered the warrant to be issued against Harpal Singh and Harneet, owners of the Indian Institute of Job-Oriented Training, at Hargobind Enclave in Preet Vihar.

According to a complaint filed by Saurabh Jain and a few other students from the institute on December 21, 2006, they took admission in its CA course last year. Classes were scheduled to begin in August, but complainants said the faculty was not up to the mark. Besides, they said, the course was never completed.

The students said the owners had claimed during admission that it was a government-aided institution, and that former Union Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha was its chairman. Both, however, were found to be fabrication.

The complainants alleged that the owners later submitted attendance records filled up by the teachers themselves to show that the course had been completed as per schedule. They said when they were manhandled and thrown out of the premises when they asked the owners about this.

The District Forum found the institute’s brochure and the owners’ claim, attaching it a government-aided status, untrue. This, the Forum observed, clearly indicates “misrepresentation and unfair trade practice”.

The owners also did not comply with Forum president A K Jain and Mukul Mishra’s directions, though an order on April 9, to pay Rs 4,000 compensation and Rs 1,000 each to Saurabh Jain and four other complainants.

... contd.