The petitioner herein is the revision petitioner/accused in a prosecution under Sec.138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881. The request of the petitioner in this petition is to get the disputed signature in Ext.P-10 compared with the admitted signatures of the petitioner by a handwriting expert of the Forensic Science Laboratory, Thiruvananthapuram.

2. The case of the first respondent/complainant who is a money lender is that the accused borrowed a sum of Rs.4.25 lakhs as evidenced by Ext.P-10 voucher dated 9-4-1999 and towards discharge of the said liability the accused issued Ext.P-4 cheque dated 14-3-2002 for Rs.6,10,000 and on presentation of the cheque in the drawee bank it bounced.

3. The revision petitioner inter alia took up the stand that in relation to certain previous transactions with the complainant bank, five blank cheques were taken by the complainant from the revision petitioner and Ext. P-4 cheque is one of those cheques and the signatures in Ext.P-10 voucher as well as Ext.P-4 cheque were forged.

4. The revision petitioner has a grievance that one Advocate Mohan was engaged by him to appear for him in the trial court and the said Advocate expired during the pendency of the case and since a junior advocate was thereafter appearing for the petitioner, he did not take prompt steps for getting the disputed signature examined by an expert.

5. The learned counsel appearing for the first respondent/complainant opposed the application contending inter alia as follows:

The revision petitioner/accused had not cared to send even a reply to the statutory notice sent by him. No such petition was filed by him before the trial court. The Notwithstanding slight discrepancy, the signatures in Ext.P-4 cheque and Ext.P-10 voucher resemble the undisputed signatures of the accused in his vakalath, deposition (D.W.1) etc. The trial court has noticed that his own admitted signature in Ext.P-9 postal acknowledgment differs from his own other admitted signatures. He did not dispute his signature in Ext.P-4 cheque and, therefore, the question of comparing the signatures by a handwriting expert does not arise.

6. I am afraid that I cannot agree with the above submissions on behalf of the complainant. The accused has offered an explanation as to why no reply was given by him to the statutory notice. According to him, after receipt of the said notice, when he approached the complainant, the complainant assured him that he need not take the notice seriously and accordingly took the notice from the accused who was thus disabled from preparing a reply to the notice. He has similar explanation as to why no such petition was filed before the trial court. The counsel whom he had engaged to conduct the case passed away and it was a relatively inexperienced junior who conducted the case.

7. It cannot be said that the signatures in Exts.P-4 cheque and P-10 voucher resemble the admitted signatures of the accused. I have attempted a comparison of the signature found in Ext.P-4 cheque and Ext.P-10 voucher with the undisputed signatures of the accused in his deposition as D.W.1. There appears no similarity at all in the signatures in Exts.P-4 and P-10 with admitted signatures of the accused in his deposition. In fact, in paragraph 10 of the judgment of the trial court it is observed that there is some dissimilarity in the signature in Ext.P-10 voucher with the signature of the accused in Ext.P-4 cheque and with the signatures of the accused in the bail bond, vakalath and deposition etc. No doubt, the admitted signature of the accused in Ext.P-9 postal acknowledgment card does not bear any similarity with his admitted signatures in the vakalath, bail bond and deposition. No two signatures of the same person can ever be identical in all respects. But the essential and unique characteristics of the writings of a person will invariably be present even if those signatures were to be replicated by the same person. The discrepancies in such a case