PRAKASH SHARMA Vs. VISION CELL (PVT.) LTD.

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This revisional application highlights a classic attempt to stretch the special provisions of a summary penal statute beyond its breaking point, threatening to drag a domestic stranger into the harsh net of a criminal prosecution. The petitioner has approached this Court under Sec. 482 read with Sec. 401 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, seeking the wholesale quashing of the proceedings in Complaint Case No. CN/533 of 2020 pending before the Learned 14th Metropolitan Magistrate at Calcutta. The immediate trigger for this petition is an interlocutory order dtd. 17/12/2021, by which the learned Magistrate rejected the petitioner 's plea to drop his name from the array of the accused, holding himself procedurally restricted within a summary summons framework from recalling his own process.

(2.) The factual landscape, as it appears from the complaint, reveals that the complainant, a private limited company dealing in mobile handsets, instituted a prosecution under Sec. 138 read with Sec. 141 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881. The complainant asserted that an entity styled as M/s S.R. Telematics (Accused No. 1) had run up an outstanding commercial liability of Rs.2,34,931.00 for mobile phone supplies. The complaint states that Accused No. 2 (Ram Ratan Sharma) and Accused No. 3 (Prakash Sharma, the petitioner here) were active "partners" of the firm, looking after its daily operations. To liquidate part of this debt, two cheques totalling Rs.53,879.00 (being Cheque No. 006914 for Rs.27,287.00 and Cheque No. 006915 for Rs.26,592.00), dtd. 20/2/2020, were drawn on the Hatibagan Branch of Allahabad Bank under the account of the firm. When presented on 21/4/2020, both instruments bounced and were returned with the banking remark "ACCOUNT CLOSED" vide Cheque Return Memo dtd. 24/4/2020. The statutory demand notice dtd. 22/5/2020 went unanswered, leading to the filing of the complaint.

(3.) The controversy shifts dramatically when one glances at two unassailable public documents brought on record by the petitioner. First, the official Trade License issued by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation for 2018 -2019 proves that M/s S.R. Telematics was never a partnership firm, but was structured exclusively as a sole proprietorship concern belonging to the petitioner's mother, Mrs. Shakuntala Sharma. Second, a death certificate issued by the registration authority establishes that Accused No. 2, the petitioner 's father and the alleged drawer of the cheques, had passed away intestate on 23/11/2017; nearly three years prior to the apparent dates written on the face of the instruments in 2020. The Learned Magistrate, operating within the strict confines of a summary trial, rejected the petitioner's plea to be dropped from the array of parties, holding that once cognizance is taken, there is no procedural room for "discharge" or recall of process under the rule governing summary summons trials.