The burden of proof lies with the complainant to establish a legally enforceable debt in cases of dishonoured cheques. Acquittal upheld due to insufficient evidence.

COMMON ORDER

All these matters originate from the transaction between the same parties, and as such, they are taken up and disposed of together by this common judgement.

2.In all these cases, the respondents/accused were acquitted of the offences under Sec. 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881 , by the trial court in the various Calendar Case Numbers. The following tabular column would reflect the calendar case numbers:

3.The simple case of the complainant in each of the cases is that the respondent/accused is in the business of making films. For that, they needed machinery and equipments for the production of the films. Accordingly, for the purchase of machinery such as tungsten lights, other machinery etc., they approached the complainant, which is a company involved in the business of advancing finances by way of hypothecation etc. After scrutinising the application, the first agreement of hypothecation was entered into in HP94COR00037 on 16.11.1994. The total sum of Rs.2 crores was advanced as a loan towards the purchase of machinery and the machinery were supplied under invoices in which the complainant company was shown as the owner and the accused company is shown as the hire purchaser. Thereafter, once again, some more machinery were also purchased, and yet another lease agreement No. LE 96MAA 103 dated 4.4.1996, for a sum of Rs. 11,493,180/- was entered into .

Accordingly, the second lease, a higher purchase agreement was entered into vide agreement number LE 96MAA 103 dated 4.4.1996.

4. The monthly instalment that was payable was Rs.5,55,000/-. The accused company had also started paying several instalments. However, in due course, from the year 1995-96, there were defaults. While these agreements were in force, since the accused company started defaulting, in order to keep the limitation period alive and also to avoid taking drastic steps such as re- possession of machinery and initiating legal action as against the accused, by only capitalising the subsequent interest and also the instalments which are not covered by any other cheque bounce cases, the third agreement dated HP97MAA00352 dated 31.03.1998 and the fourth agreement in HP98MAA00127 dated 28.09.1998 were entered into.

5. In respect of the payments of the instalments, the cheques which are the subject matter of these cases were issued. Upon the cheques being presented on the relevant dates, the cheques were dishonoured with the endorsement of 'insufficient funds.' When demand notices under Sec. 138 of the N.I.Act were issued, no reply was sent by the accused persons. Thereafter, when all these cases were filed, initially, a decision was rendered on 20.07.2005 in about 30 cases. Because these were batch cases; in many cases, even the recording of evidence seems to have been done in a mechanical manner by adopting cut and paste method. In many cases, the facts are distorted, the documents are incorrectly mentioned etc. Only in some cases when Ex.D1 is marked, however, it is shown as Ex.D1 in the cases where no documents were marked by the defence as well. Similarly, there are errors in quoting the prosecution-side evidenc