Why in News?

A bench of Justices Hrishikesh Roy and Pankaj Mittal observed in this case the court cannot rely upon the ruling of V.K. Bansal v. State of Haryana (2013) as the existence of circumstances in both the cases are different.

• The court made this observation in the matter of K Padmaja Rani v. State of Telangana.

Background

• The grievance of the petitioner was on account of consecutive sentence ordered for the four cases against her, under the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881.
• The petitioner relied on verdict in V.K. Bansal v. State of Haryana & Anr. (2013) to point out that for a single transaction, the Court should have ordered concurrent running of sentence instead of consecutive sentence.
• The Apex Court denied granting her benefit of the V K Bansal case as her case did not stand on same footing.

Court’s Observation

The court observed that in this case there were several transactions over a period of time pertaining to supply of raw material to the petitioner for which the cheques tendered towards payment were dishonoured.

Concurrent and Consecutive Sentencing

• Consecutive punishments refer to the scenario where a court gives sentence in two or more cases, the second sentence will commence after the expiration of first sentence.
• Concurrent punishments mean that two punishments will be counted parallelly.
  • When two sentences are directed to run concurrently, they do merge into one sentence.
• Section 31(1) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (CrPC) entrusts a discretion in the Court to direct that the punishment shall run concurrently when a person is convicted at one trial of two or more offences.
• Section 427 of the CrPC, 1973 directs that one sentence takes effect after the other. The sentencing Court has the discretion of ordering a concurrency of punishments.

Cheque Bouncing

• According to Section 6, of the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881, the term cheque is defined as “a bill of exchange drawn on a specified banker and not expressed to be payable otherwise than on demand”.
• A cheque bounce is an offence under Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881 punishable with a fine which can extend to twice the amount of the cheque or imprisonment for a term not more than two years or both.
• When the payee presents a cheque to the bank for payment, and it is returned by the bank because of the insufficiency of funds it is said to be bounced or dishonoured.
• The reasons which results into dishonour of cheque are insufficiency of funds, an expired cheque, overwriting, a damaged cheque, and mismatching of signature, amount or digits.

Legal Provision

Section 138 of the Negotiable Instrument Act, 1881 - Dishonour of cheque for insufficiency, etc., of funds in the account. —

Where any cheque drawn by a person on an account maintained by him with a banker for payment of any amount of money to another person from out of that account for the discharge, in whole or in part, of any debt or other liability, is returned by the bank unpaid, either because of the amount of money standing to the credit of that account is insufficient to honour the cheque or that it exceeds the amount arranged to be paid from that account by an agreement made with that bank, such person shall be deemed to have committed an offence and shall, without prejudice to any other provisions of this Act, be punished with imprisonment for a term which may be extended to two years, or with fine which may extend to twice the amount of the cheque, or with both: Provided that nothing contained in this section shall apply unless—

(a) the cheque has been presented to the bank within a period of six months from the date on which it is drawn or within the period of its validity, whichever is earlier;

(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 30 days] of the receipt of information by him from the bank regarding the return of the cheque as unpaid; and

(c) the drawer of such cheque fails to make the payment of the said amount of money to the payee or, as the case may be, to the holder in due course of the cheque, within fifteen days of the receipt of the said notice.

Explanation.— For the purposes of this section, “debt or other liability” means a legally enforceable debt or other liability.