Srinagar, Oct 24: A court here sentenced a man to one year’s simple imprisonment in a cheque bounce case and directed him to pay double the amount of the cheque as compensation to the complainant.
The court of Sub-Judge Srinagar Junaid Imtiaz Mir sentenced Bashir Ahmad Bujal of Nehru Park Srinagar after holding him guilty in a case related to dishonouring of a cheque for Rs 46.50 lakh.
The case arose from a complaint filed by Naseer Ahmad Ratta of Nishat, who claimed that the accused owed him Rs 46.50 lakh following settlement of their property-related business dealings.
Bujal had issued a cheque for Rs 46.50 lakh which was dishonoured by the bank with the remark “Payment Stopped by Drawer”. A statutory demand notice was subsequently issued, but the accused failed to make payment within the prescribed period.
The accused had denied liability, claiming that he had handed over a signed blank cheque to the complainant in the course of their business relationship and that it was subsequently misused. The court, however, held that the defence failed to rebut the statutory presumption arising from the admitted signature and handing over of the cheque.
The court noted that merely filling in the particulars of a signed cheque by the payee does not, by itself, invalidate the instrument or displace the statutory presumption. The accused, it said, had not produced convincing material showing that the cheque had been misused or that the alleged liability did not exist.
The court convicted Bujal under Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act after concluding that the complainant had established all essential ingredients of the offence.
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