New Delhi, Sep 22 (UNI) Justifying the probe by the Delhi Police into the death of a journalist allegedly due to starvation following blocking of his credit card by Standard Chartered Bank, the Delhi High Court today said the banks did not have any right to resort to illegitimate measures to recover their dues.

While dismissing the revision petition of the multi-national bank, a Division Bench of acting Chief Justice Vijender Jain and Justice Kailash Gambhir said, ''We express our strong disapproval to the practices being adopted by these banks including the appellant to recover their dues through illegitimate means.'' ''We strongly deprecate such methods on the part of these institutions. Banks and financial institutions have every right to recover their dues but they are not only expected but bound to take recourse to the law of the land for recovery of their dues,'' the court said.

A single bench of the High Court had directed the police to institute a probe into the allegations by Professor Yogesh Sharma, an Associate Professor at premier Jawahar Lal Nehru University whose journalist brother Rakesh had died at Mumbai Airport in October 2004 due to blockage of his credit card and the bank authorities had been adopting criminal intimadating tactics against him and his parents for the recovery of the dues.

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