TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2008 (1) TMI 991
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....ned Judicial Magistrate I, Erode. He filed a petition under Section 45 of the Evidence Act to send the disputed cheque for comparison by an expert to determine the age of the ink of the signature found in the disputed cheque marked as Ex.P1 before the Trial Court. It is his contention that the signature found in Ex.P1 has been put in a different ink from that of the other particulars filled in the cheque. It is his further contention that he issued blank cheques and pronotes with his signature therein. But, the same has been filled and misused by the respondent. Therefore, the petitioner has prayed for sending the disputed cheque, Ex.P1 to the Forensic Laboratory at Hyderabad to determine the age of the ink of the signature of the petitione....
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....lder in due course. When the signature found in the cheque is admitted, the petitioner cannot challenge the particulars filled up by the holder in due course in the cheque. At any rate, he would submit that there is no perfect science to determine the age of the ink used in a document. 6. Section 20 of the Negotiable Instruments Act reads as follows: Inchoate stamped instruments--Where one person signs and delivers to another a paper stamped in accordance with the law relating to negotiable instruments then in force in India, and either wholly blank or having written thereon an incomplete negotiable instrument, he thereby gives prima facie authority to the holder thereof to make or complete, as the case may be, upon it a negotia....
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....ble Instruments Act in the aforesaid authority. A general proposition has been made to the effect that there is a presumption, in case a signed cheque is delivered to the payee, that the cheque so issued by the drawer in favour of the payee is only towards the discharge of his subsisting liability. 9. The aforesaid authority does not run counter to the provision under Section 20 of the Negotiable Instruments Act. As rightly observed therein, there is no law which prescribes that a cheque shall be filled up by the drawer himself. If such proposition is accepted, no unlettered person, who knows only to sign his name, can ever be a drawer of a cheque. Further, a person who is physically incapacitated to fill up the cheque cannot also draw a....
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.... the purpose is to enable the Magistrate to compare the disputed signature or writing with the admitted writing or signature of the accused and to reach his own conclusion with the assistance of the expert. The appellant is entitled to rebut the case of the respondent and if the document viz., the cheque on which the respondent has relied upon for initiating criminal proceedings against the appellant would furnish good material for rebutting the case, the Magistrate having declined to send the document for the examination and opinion of the hand-writing expert has deprived the appellant of an opportunity of rebutting it. The appellant cannot be convicted without an opportunity being given to her to present her evidence and if it is denied t....
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....rved that denial of an opportunity to the accused seeking to send the disputed cheque for examination and opinion of handwriting expert would amount to unfair trial and deprivation of an opportunity to the accused to rebut the claim of the complainant. The aforesaid ratio cannot be extended to the facts and circumstances of this case where the signature in the disputed cheque was candidly admitted by the accused. 12. Following the aforesaid ratio, this Court has also held in P.R. Ramakrishnan v. P. Govindarajan (2007) 1 MLJ (Crl.) 1297 that when the accused disputes his signature in the cheque in question in a proceeding under Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, the court has to afford an opportunity to the accused to obtain a....