A man and his wife borrowed Rs 30,000 as capital for a business. They issued a post-dated cheque to the lender as repayment. When the lender tried to encash the cheque, he found that the account had been closed. So he lodged a case against the couple under Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act (proceedings for dishonour of cheque due to insufficient funds, etc.). The woman contended that she could not be prosecuted as she had not issued the cheque. The Andhra Pradesh High Court quashed proceedings against the wife, holding that although she was an accomplice, proceedings could not be initiated against her under Section 138 as her husband had issued the cheque (Bonthagorla Naga Lakshmi vs Yarasani Lingaiah and others).
When a man could not repay his debt of Rs 3,91,159 the court ordered that his property (six plots lying contiguously to form a single piece of land measuring nine acres) be auctioned to recover the amount. The man challenged the order in the Kerala High Court on the ground that there was no need to auction off the entire property to recover the amount. The court held that as the property was worth Rs 25 lakh, only a portion of it should be sold to recover the loan, especially since the property could easily be divided into smaller portions. The high court remitted the case to the lower court to be considered afresh (Gopalaswamy Kounder vs Ramaswamy Kounder).
In a property dispute case, the defendants asked the court under Section 45 of the Evidence Act to send some documents to a handwriting expert to verify the signature of the power of attorney holder. The petitioner challenged the order on the ground that the concerned documents were photocopies and a handwriting expert could not give an opinion on them. The Andhra Pradesh High Court ruled that a handwriting expert ought to analyse the slant of the signature and the point of time when the signature was tendered and such analysis could be made only in respect of original documents. The court asked the defendants to apply afresh if the original document was available (Bheri Nageswara Rao vs Mavuri Veerbhadra Rao and others).
SOLON
