IMPORTANT POINT
If five different acts were done in five different localities any one of courts exercising jurisdiction in one of five local areas can become place of trial for offence under Section 138 of N.I.Act.

Jagdish Singh Khehar, J.—This Court on 21.2.2013 directed that the instant SLP (Crl.) No.7325 of 2012 be listed after the pronouncement of judgment in Criminal Appeal no. 808 of 2013 (arising out of SLP (Crl.) No. 9434 of 2011), titled Nishant Aggarwal v. Kailash Kumar Sharma. Nishant Aggarwal’s case (supra) was disposed of by this Court on 1.7.2013. The pointed question, which arose for consideration in this Court’s aforesaid determination was, whether the Court within the jurisdiction whereof, the complainant had presented the dishonoured cheque (issued by an accused), had the jurisdiction to entertain a petition filed under Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act. While disposing Criminal Appeal No.808 of 2013, this Court returned a finding in the affirmative by observing as under:

“(7) We have already narrated the case of both the parties in the pleadings portion. In order to answer the only question, it is relevant to note that the undisputed facts in the context of territorial jurisdiction of the learned Magistrate at Bhiwani are that the drawee of the cheque i.e., the respondent/ complainant is a resident of Bhiwani. The native village of the respondent, namely, village Barsana is situated in District Bhiwani. The respondent owns ancestral agricultural land at village Barsana, District Bhiwani. It is also asserted that the respondent is running his bank account with Canara Bank, Bhiwani and is also residing at the present address for the last about two decades. In view of the same, it is the claim of the respondent that he bonafidely presented the cheque in his bank at Bhiwani which was further presented to the drawer’s Bank at Guwahati. The cheque was returned uncashed to the respondent’s bank at Bhiwani with the endorsement “payment stopped by drawer”. The respondent received the bounced cheque back from his bank at Bhiwani. Thereafter, the respondent sent a legal notice under Section 138 of the N.I. Act to the appellant from Bhiwani. In turn, the appellant sent a reply to the said notice which the respondent received at Bhiwani. In view of non-payment of the cheque amount, the respondent filed a complaint under Sections 138 and 141 of the N.I. Act before the learned Magistrate at Bhiwani.

(8) Inasmuch as the issue in question is directly considered by this Court in K. Bhaskaran (supra), before going into the applicability of other decisions, it is useful to refer the relevant portion of the judgment in paras 10 and 11 of the said case which reads thus:

“10. Learned counsel for the appellant first contended that the trial court has no jurisdiction to try this case and hence the High Court should not have converted the acquittal into conviction on the strength of the evidence collected in such a trial. Of course, the trial court had upheld the pleas of the accused that it had no jurisdiction to try the case.

11. We fail to comprehend as to how the trial court could have found so regarding the jurisdiction question. Under Section 177 of the Code “every offence shall ordinarily be enquired into and tried in a court within whose jurisdiction it was committed”. The locality where the Bank (which dishonoured the cheque) is situated cannot be regarded as the sole criterion to determine the place of offence.

It must be remembered that offence under Section 138 would not be completed with the dishonour of the cheque. It attains completion only with the failure of the drawer of the cheque to pay the cheque amount within the expiry of 15 days mentioned in clause (c) of the proviso to Section 138 of the Act. It is normally difficult to fix up a particular locality as the place of failure to pay the amount covered by the cheque. A place, for that purpose, would depend upon a variety of factors. It can either be at the place where the drawer resides or at the place where the payee resides or at the place where either of them carries on business. Hence, the difficulty to fix up any particular locality as the place