C.Vijay Reddy vs The State Of Telangana
2025 Latest Caselaw 1903 Tel

Citation : 2025 Latest Caselaw 1903 Tel
Judgement Date : 7 February, 2025

Telangana High Court

C.Vijay Reddy vs The State Of Telangana on 7 February, 2025

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     THE HONOURABLE SRI JUSTICE K.SURENDER

          CRIMINAL PETITION No.1886 OF 2019

ORDER:

This Criminal Petition is filed seeking to quash the

proceedings in Crl.M.P.No.1903 in C.C.No.89 of 2018, on the

file of IX Special Magistrate, Hyderabad. The offence alleged

against the petitioner is under Section 138 of the Negotiable

Instruments Act, 1881.

2. Heard learned counsel for the petitioner and

Sri M.Vivekananda Reddy, learned Assistant Public Prosecutor

for respondent No.1-State. Perused the record.

3. The petitioner is questioning the order permitting the

complainant to change descriptive particular of 2nd accused as

S/o.(son of) in place of W/o.(wife of).

4. Learned Magistrate found that the legal notice sent to the

address mentioned in the cause title returned with an

endorsement 'door locked'. Whether there was service of notice

or not or whether mis-description in the cause title has caused

prejudice can be decided during trial.

5. Learned counsel appearing on behalf of the petitioner

would submit that said description is incurable. The very

description of accused is sought to be changed, which cannot

be permitted.

6. Learned counsel relied on the judgment of the High Court

of Punjab and Haryana in Dr.Sangeeta Aggarwal v. RAjbir and

another 1. In the said judgment, the High Court interfered with

the application alleging the name being changed from Archana

Goel to Sangeeta Aggarwal. Since there is a total change of

name, Hon'ble High Court rightly allowed the application. In

the present case, prayer was to change S/o. to W/o. Since

name remains unchanged, the said judgment is not applicable.

7. Learned counsel also relied on judgment of the Hon'ble

Supreme Court in K.Bhaskaran v. Sankaran Vaidhyan Balan

and Another 2. The relevant paragraphs read as under:-

"19.In Black's Law Dictionary, `giving of notice' is distinguished from `receiving of the notice.' (vide page

621) "A person notifies or gives notice to another by taking such steps as may be reasonably required to inform the other in the ordinary course, whether or not such other actually comes to know of it." A person

(1999) 7 SCC 510

`receives' a notice when it is duly delivered to him or at the place of his business.

20.If a strict interpretation is given that the drawer should have actually received the notice for the period of 15 days to start running no matter that the payee sent the notice on the correct address, a trickster cheque drawer would get the premium to avoid receiving the notice by different strategies and he could escape-from the legal consequences of Section 138 of the Act. It must be borne in mind that Court should not adopt in interpretation which helps a dishonest evader and clips an honest payee as that would defeat the very legislative measure.

In the said judgment, the Hon'ble Supreme Court was referring

to the period, after notice was received. The said judgment is

not applicable to the present facts of the case.

8. There is no infirmity in the order of the learned

Magistrate.

9. Accordingly, the Criminal Petition is dismissed. In the

event of petitioner filing an application under Rule 37 of

Criminal Rules of Practice, the same shall be allowed subject to

conditions to be imposed by the learned Magistrate. Needless

to say, the petitioner can agitate all the grounds raised herein

before the Court below and same shall be decided on merits.

Miscellaneous petitions, if any pending, shall stand closed.