Vicarious liability under the dishonour-of-cheque provisions...

Vicarious liability under the dishonour-of-cheque provisions cannot be extended to a non-signatory merely because of a family relationship with the proprietor of a sole proprietorship concern. A proprietorship has no separate legal identity from its proprietor and does not fall within the entities to which vicarious liability applies. Liability for cheque dishonour is author-centric: the cheque must be drawn on an account maintained by the accused. Death of the account holder revokes the banking mandate and agency, so a non-account-holder cannot be prosecuted as drawer. Where the complaint and public records show these statutory defects, inherent jurisdiction may be used to prevent abuse of process by quashing groundless proceedings.