TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2022 (2) TMI 86
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....er, referred to as 'the N.I. Act') and involve the same parties. Accordingly, the petitions are taken up for hearing together and shall be disposed of by a common order. 3. Learned counsel for the petitioners submits that the impugned criminal complaints are not maintainable qua the petitioners, as the relevant legal demand notices were issued after the expiry of statutory period of 30 days set out under the N.I. Act. It is contended that the said notices being invalid, the necessary ingredients of Section 138(b) N.I. Act are not satisfied and thus, the impugned criminal complaints ought to be quashed. 4. I have heard the submissions made as well as perused the material placed on record. 5. A reading of the case records would show that the respondent/complainant is a Company engaged in the business of lending of financial assistance for renewable energy projects. Pursuant to the petitioner Company approaching it for a loan facility, a transaction was entered into between the complainant Company and the petitioner Company, in due course whereof, three cheques dated 31.03.2015, 30.09.2015 and 30.06.2016 respectively were issued by the petitioner Company in favor of the complainant....
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....the complainant Company were sent within the limitation period of thirty days prescribed under Section 138(b) N.I. Act. 8. Considering the issues involved in the present case, it is deemed profitable to first extract Section 138(b) N.I. Act hereunder, which enunciates as follows:- "138. ...Provided that nothing contained in this section shall apply unless- xxx (b) the payee or the holder in due course of the cheque, as the case may be, makes a demand for the payment of the said amount of money by giving a notice in writing, to the drawer of the cheque, [within thirty days] of the receipt of information by him from the bank regarding the return of the cheque as unpaid; and" (emphasis added) 9. To recapitulate briefly, Section 138 N.I. Act provides punishment for commission of an offence relating to dishonor of cheques, subject to the conditions set out in the proviso thereto. Clause (b), in particular, of the proviso prescribes that in order to establish commission of an offence under Section 138 N.I. Act, a legal demand notice ought to have been issued to the accused within 30 days of the receipt of information by the complainant that the cheque was returned as unpaid. ....
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....olidays and, therefore, the appellant came to learn about the dishonour of his cheque on 17-11994." 13. Note is also taken of the decision in N. Parameswaran Unni v. G. Kannan and Another reported as (2017) 5 SCC 737, where while commenting on Section 138(b) N.I. Act, as it stood prior to the amendment in 2002, the Supreme Court has opined thus:- "11. A bare reading of Section 138 of the NI Act indicates that the purport of Section 138 is to prevent and punish the dishonest drawers of cheques who evade and avoid their liability. As explained in clause (b) of the proviso, the payee or the holder of the cheque in due course is necessarily required to serve a written notice on the drawer of the cheque within fifteen days from the date of intimation received from the bank about dishonour." (emphasis added) 14. To appreciate whether or not the day on which information regarding dishonor of cheque is received by the complainant is to be included in calculation of limitation period under Section 138(b) N.I. Act, it is deemed expedient to allude to the decision rendered in Econ Antri Limited v. Rom Industries Limited and Another reported as (2014) 11 SCC 769, where a three-Judge Bench....
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.... Section 142(b) of the NI Act, the period has to be reckoned by excluding the date on which the cause of action arose. It is not possible to agree with the counsel for the respondents that the use of the two different words "from" and "of" in Section 138 at different places indicates the intention of the legislature to convey different meanings by the said words. xxx 39. In view of the above, it is not possible to hold that the word "of" occurring in Section 138(c) and 142(b) of the NI Act is to be interpreted differently as against the word "from" occurring in Section 138(a) of the NI Act; and that for the purposes of Section 142(b), which prescribes that the complaint is to be filed within 30 days of the date on which the cause of action arises, the starting day on which the cause of action arises should be included for computing the period of 30 days. As held in Fallon, ex p the words "of", "from" and "after" may, in a given case, mean really the same thing. As stated in Stroud's Judicial Dictionary, Vol. 3, 1953 Edn., Note (5), the word "of" is sometimes equivalent of "after". xxx 42. Having considered the question of law involved in this case in proper perspective, in ....