Point of Law
Payee or the holder in due course of the cheque may file a fresh complaint within one month from the date of decision in the criminal case and, in that event, delay in filing the complaint will be treated as having been condoned under the proviso to clause (b) of Section 142 of the NI Act.

JUDGMENT :

1. Heard Sri Ronak Chaturvedi, learned counsel for the applicant, Mr. Anand Priya Singh, learned counsel for opposite party no.2 and Mr. Prashant Kumar, learned A.G.A. for the State assisted by Mr. P.K. Sahi, State Law Officer.

2. Learned counsel for the applicant, learned counsel for opposite party no.2 and the learned A.G.A. agree that the present application may be disposed of at this stage without calling for further affidavits in view of the order proposed to be passed today.

3. By means of this 482 Cr.P.C. application, the applicant has questioned order dated 7th May, 2019 summoning the applicant, order dated 21st March, 2015 issuing non-bailable warrant against him as well as the entire proceedings of the Complaint Case No. 1546 of 2014 (Om Construction Vs. M/s. Komal Construction), under Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881 (hereinafter referred to as the “N.I. Act”), Police Station-Obra, District-Sonbhadra, pending in the Court of.

4. The facts, as borne out from the complaint made by opposite party no.2 against the applicant on 13th August, 2014 under Section 156 (3) Cr.P.C. in the Court of Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate, Sonebhadra, are as follows:

The company of applicant, in the name and style of “M/s. Komal Construction, under various work orders and tenders of Railway and other departments, extensively undertakes various types of constructions such as pool construction, brick works etc. on huge basis and all the works and other arrangements are done by the applicant. Since the company got two work orders from M/s. Kalendi Railway Construction (Engineering Ltd.) and for completion of the said work on time and on speed, which requires a lot of labor, resources, machines, etc. to speed up the work to complete on an adjusted basis. To fulfill all those works, the applicant needed to assign work to another person or firm and pay their expenses according to labor under which the applicant made a proposal to opposite party no. 2. to do the above work speedily and also assured that the applicant has more big tasks and his client talked him to complete the said work quickly and in lieu of this, the applicant requested opposite party no.2 for arranging machine, labor, capital and other expenses and also assured him to give work order of his company. Accepting the proposal, the applicant, opposite party no.2 agreed to work with him. Opposite party no.2 requested the applicant that because there are two marriages in his house, he would arrange the machine, money and everything but he would reach on the spot rarely. Being busy in the said marriages, opposite party no.2 could hardly reach the spot but he had arranged machine, money and everything whichever was required as per his assurance. In that way opposite party no.2 spent lot of money and labor on trusting the applicant and the opposite party no.2 also got a written contract from the applicant and he had worked under those contracts. In this way, opposite party no.2 started working with the applicant under contracts given by the applicant and gave his machine, labor and money. After being free from marriages, when he came to the site of applicant, he came to know that the applicant had taken money and labor from other people like him and those people were very angry and they were threatening the applicant to return their money. When opposite party no.2 asked the applicant as to why he has not given their money, he told opposite party no.2 that in case he is interested in working with him, he may do the same, otherwise get away with his money. When opposite party no.2 asked the applicant to refund the expenditure incurred in aforesaid works taken by him, he started bothering him by promising to refund the same by tomorrow or day-after tomorrow. In spite of that, the applicant continued to lure him by showing him income tax return worth of 5-7 crores and a turnover of 50-60 crores. Ultimately after enormous pressure exerted by opposite party no.