fraud harassment
Fraud by private hostel management
<p>I am a college passout student who is doing his internship in a company for 3 month and was in need of a place to stay for this period.</p>

<p>I took shelter in a private hostel where I was made to sign a form and fill only the basic details by the hostel owner (I did not write any date of leaving there). He charged me ₹8000 as caution money(refundable and mentioned in the bill) and ₹7000 as rent amount.</p>

<p>After 3 months approx, now I plan to move out of the hostel to, but the owner refuses to return the caution money and apart from that harasses me daily to pay the fees for the current month. I had not written the date of leaving on the form but it was later filled by himself as per his wish. Now he wants me to pay for the next month or leave the hostel without refunding the caution money (As the form states a date later than the period in which I am leaving). I am tortured daily for this and am planning to seek help. Please guide me what should I do and how am I protected under the law by such frauds.</p>

<p>The main question is what your contract says. It may be that the form you signed, the agreement, contained clauses that you didn't read, pay attention to, or understand, and the owner is exercising an option under the contract to retain that deposit because you breached the contract. Your recourse would be to establish that you didn't breach the contract: you would sue him to recover the amount, if you can't persuade him that he is legally wrong. Another possibility is that you did not correctly understand the nature of that amount, and it was not a refundable deposit. If you have paperwork that shows that it is to be refunded, he could not claim "it wasn't a deposit".</p>

<p>A further possibility (as you suggest) is that the owner modified the document after you signed it, relying on the fact that you did not retain a copy of the contract. If you can prove that he forged the document, and that is a crime under sect. <a href="https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1317063/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">465 of the Penal Code</a>. Because it is a crime, if the only evidence is your say-so that a particular clause or specification didn't exist in the document when you signed it, that would not support a criminal conviction. If you had kept a copy, that might make a difference. It might suffice to nullify his argument  in civil court that he is entitled to keep the deposit (because you failed to pay the final rent). The owner is also likely to argue that you agreed to the later date that he filled in, so again you would need to provide some evidence that you hadn't agreed to filling in that date.</p>
