ORDER:

Accused before trial Court filed this Criminal Petition under Section 482 of Code of Criminal Procedure (Cr.P.C.). Respondent No.1 is the complainant on whose complaint prosecution was initiated against the accused for the offences under Sections 138 and 142 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881 (for short, ‘the N.I. Act’). Respondent No.2 is State.

2. Sri Venkaiah C., the learned counsel for petitioner and Sri Phani Babu Yalamanchili, the learned counsel for respondent No.1 submitted arguments.

3. In the criminal petition certain procedural irregularities are alleged. Therefore, the following facts that are available from the record and that are argued by the learned counsel on both sides are required to be noticed:

Facts in the criminal case are to the effect that between accused and the complainant there has been long standing acquaintance and over a period on various occasions accused borrowed various amounts of money from the complainant and finally it was found that the accused was indebted to a tune of Rs.25,00,000/-. Accused allegedly executed an acceptance note dated 12.03.2015 with reference to the amounts that are overdue from him. O.S.No.407 of 2016 was filed for recovery of money. While so, towards repayment of a part of this debt, accused allegedly gave a cheque dated 01.07.2016 for Rs.20,00,000/- to the complainant and on its presentation it was dishonoured for insufficiency of funds and after issuance of statutory notice since no payment was made, a complaint under Section 200 Cr.P.C. was filed alleging offences under Sections 138 and 142 of the N.I. Act. On summons accused appeared and was furnished with copies of documents and he was examined under Section 251 Cr.P.C. where he entered his plea of not guilty. Thereafter trial commenced. Before the learned III Additional Metropolitan Magistrate Court, Visakhapatnam the said case was under trial as C.C.No.41 of 2017. Accused is defended by a learned counsel appearing on his behalf. In the complaint filed before the learned trial Court the complainant enlisted seven documents and cited five witnesses. Document No.1 therein is the acceptance note dated 12.03.2015 whereunder accused allegedly recorded the amount of money he was indebted to. On 19.03.2019 complainant testified as PW.1 by filing her evidence affidavit. Copy of that was served on the accused and in acknowledgment of receipt of it accused singed it. During the evidence of PW.1 the learned Magistrate marked the acceptance note dated 12.03.2015 as Ex.P.1.

4. In her evidence affidavit PW.1 mentioned about other documents including the following three documents which were marked by the learned Magistrate as Exs.P.6, P.7 and P.8.

Ex.P.6 : Personal account book maintained by complainant.

Ex.P.7 : A cancelled promissory note dated 22.11.2013. Ex.P.8 : A cancelled promissory note dated 12.12.2013.

About Exs.P.2 to P.5 there is no controversy raised in this petition before this Court.

5. The contention of the accused was that his learned counsel was attending another Court and accused himself was present in the Court and when the evidence affidavit was served, he did not know what was mentioned in it and he acknowledged receipt of it and nothing more and the learned Magistrate committed two errors in marking the documents. According to the accused, Ex.P.1 (acceptance note) is written on insufficient stamp paper. Learned counsel contends that such a document ought to have been written on a stamp of Rs.100/- but the said document was written on only a stamp of Rs.50/- and therefore, it ought not to have been marked without impounding it and collecting stamp duty and penalty. Coming to Exs.P.6, P.7 and P.8, the contention of the accused is that these documents were not part of the complaint and they were not mentioned in the list of documents filed with the complaint and no separate application for production of these documents was filed by the complainant at the time of trial and the learned Magistrate without