The Bombay High Court recently restrained several websites fraudulently providing PAN related services and noted that the continuation of these websites would compromise valuable confidential data and pose a national level threat.
The Plaintiff (“UTI Infrastructure Technology and Services Limited), exclusively authorized by
the Income Tax Department for processing the Permanent Account Number (“PAN”) and PAN related services such as Aadhar Card, Voted ID, driving license, etc., since 2003, filed the present suit against the Defendant websites, unauthorizedly using the Plaintiff’s labels and marks such as PAN/ UTI PAN/ UTI/ UTI ITSL/ UTITSL etc.
The counsel appearing for the Plaintiff demonstrated that the Defendant websites are fraudulently collecting personal and confidential data and issuing fake PAN cards to the public, while misrepresenting themselves to be authorized by the Plaintiff for issuance of PAN and PAN related services.
The Court observed that since the PAN card and Aadhar Card are acceptable proof of
identification in India, any unauthorized use is not only detrimental to the interest of the Plaintiff, but also to the national interest. In light of the aforesaid, the Court granted an ex-parte ad-interim injunction restraining the Defendant websites and directed the relevant Domain Name Registrars to suspend the domain names associated with the Defendant websites.
Judgement Docs can be accessed here, https://shorturl.at/mHRX8
UTI Infrastructure Technology and Services Limited v. Extra Tech World and Ors. [Suti (L) No.
537/2024 order dated January 12, 2024]