Dear Experts,
Below is a summary of my situation followed by the questions I am seeking your legal opinions for:
1) We are owners of an apartment in a CHS in MUMBAI.The sole resident of this apartment is my mother. The normal consumption of the flat when occupied is around 175 units with an average bill of 780 Rs/-
2) My mother has been outside the country since August 2013 and so we have no consumption of electricity at our place.
3) From December 2013 upto March 2014 electricity consumption is being shown by Reliance Energy and this consumption is even higher than what we have used in the last three years.
4) We were not aware of the high consumption until we got a notification from our neighbor stating that Reliance has taken away our meter.
5) We lodged a complaint with Reliance stating the facts of the case but Reliance energy states that since they provided the electricity and since someone consumed it we the consumer have to pay the bills to get back your meter. (Total bill amounts for three months is now over 25000 Rs/-)
So my questions are:
1) If there is a theft of electricity is it the responsibility of the energy company to investigate this or can they simply put the ownership on the consumer?
2) In the above case what legal recourse do we have to get the energy company to negogiate and settle this matter?
Please let us know your learned opinion on this matter.
Regards,
SB
