LUMINOUS POWER TECHNOLOGY PVT. LTD. Vs. VINAY AGGARWAL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) I have heard learned counsel for the parties. This leave petition has been preferred to assail the judgment of the learned Civil Judge -I/MM, New Delhi in CC No.48/2012, whereby the learned Civil Judge/MM has dismissed the complaint preferred by the petitioner under Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881 (the Act) .

(2.) THE case of the petitioner/complainant was that the respondent was appointed as a distributor of the petitioner, which manufactures inverters and supplies batteries. The case of the petitioner was that the respondent/accused had issued the cheque in question for Rs.1,68,292/ - dated 12.01.2009 drawn on Punjab National Bank, Bareli, U.P. to the petitioner towards the legally recoverable debt due from the respondent. Upon presentation, the cheque was dishonored; a statutory notice was issued to the respondent; the respondent did not make payment of the amount covered by the cheque despite the notice before the expiry of the requisite period; and therefore, the complaint had been preferred.

(3.) THE Trial Court, after recording the evidence, dismissed the complaint primarily on two grounds. The first was that the cheque amount was Rs.1,68,292/ -, whereas the ledger accounts of the complainant (DW -1/1) - which had been produced by DW -1 - the Deputy Manager of the complainant, showed that the net amount due from the respondent was Rs.1,61,042/ - as on 12.01.2009. Therefore, the amount covered by the cheque was more than the amount due from the respondent. The second ground was that the respondent had been able to raise a probable defence that the cheque in question had been issued as security in the year 2007, which had subsequently been utilised by the complainant unauthorisedly. In this regard, the Trial Court took note of the fact that the cheque in question had been drawn in the name of "M/s. Luminous Power Technologies Ltd.", whereas the name of the complainant and its composition was undergone a change as "Luminous Technologies Pvt. Ltd." in the year 2009. DW -2 Sales Representative of the complainant - who had been working for 5 years, deposed that "The products of the complainant company were supplied to the accused by way of credit. Before the products used to be dispatched to the accused, certain cheques (1 or 2 in number) were taken as security from the accused as blank cheques". Thus, the Court found probable, the defence that blank cheque which had earlier been obtained in the year 2007 was filled in later in the year 2009 by the complainant. There was no reason or explanation why the accused would issue the cheque in the year 2009 in the erstwhile name of the complainant.