Unsigned complaint under cheque dishonour law is a curable irregularity when no prejudice or failure of justice is shown.

For a prosecution under section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, cognizance depends on a complaint in writing by the payee or holder in due course; an omission of the complainant-company's signature is not, by itself, fatal. Reading the NI Act with the Code of Criminal Procedure, the court treated writing as the essential requirement and held that signature is not invariably mandatory unless the statute so requires. Because the authorised representative had appeared, given preliminary evidence, and the Magistrate had already acted on the complaint, the defect was treated as an inadvertent curable irregularity. No prejudice or failure of justice was shown, so the unsigned complaint remained maintainable.

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Issues: Whether a complaint under section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881 was invalid merely because it was not signed by the duly authorised representative of the complainant-company, and whether such omission could be cured by permitting the representative to sign the complaint later.

Analysis: Section 142 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881 requires that cognizance of an offence under section 138 be taken only on a complaint in writing made by the payee or holder in due course. The Court held that the statute insists on a written complaint, but does not expressly require the complaint itself to be signed as a condition precedent to cognizance. Reading the complaint scheme with sections 2(d), 190 and 200 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, the Court reasoned that writing is the essential requirement, while signature is not invariably mandatory unless the statute so provides. The complainant-company's authorised representative had been present, had been examined in preliminary evidence, and the complaint had already been acted upon by the Magistrate, so the omission was treated as an inadvertent procedural lapse. The Court further relied on section 465 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 to hold that no order should be reversed for an error or irregularity unless failure of justice is shown, and no prejudice to the accused was demonstrated.

Conclusion: The unsigned complaint was not a nullity, the omission was a curable irregularity, and permission to sign the complaint later was rightly granted.

Final Conclusion: The revision failed because the objection to the absence of signature did not undermine the maintainability of the complaint or the cognizance already taken, and no failure of justice was shown.

Ratio Decidendi: For an offence under section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881, cognizance depends on a complaint in writing, and the absence of the complainant's signature is only a curable procedural irregularity unless prejudice or failure of justice is shown.

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