Woman gets 6 months in jail

CHANDIGARH: A local court has sentenced a 43-year-old woman to six-month jail in a cheque-bounce case. While the judgment first says that such cases “need to be dealt with a deterrent hand”, the very next sentence says a “slight lenient view” is being taken as the “convict is a lady”.

Ishrat S Banwait

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 12

A local court has sentenced a 43-year-old woman to six-month jail in a cheque-bounce case. While the judgment first says that such cases “need to be dealt with a deterrent hand”, the very next sentence says a “slight lenient view” is being taken as the “convict is a lady”.

The convict, Savitri Devi, a resident of Mohali, will also pay Rs 15 lakh with 6 per cent interest. She was sentenced under Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act. Her husband, Subhash Chand Bath, was also made a party in the case, but was never summoned by the court.

The complainant in the case was Kuldeep Singh (40), a resident of Sector 40. He said he had been lured into a housing scheme by the convict. He, along with other family members, had given Rs 70 lakh to the convict for the purpose. However, nothing came of it for a long time and Kuldeep grew suspicious.

Upon some digging, Kuldeep found out that there were multiple complaints against the convict pertaining to cheating. He thus approached her to return his money. However, he claimed that she refused to do so outright and after much convincing, decided to pay Rs 20 lakh as the settlement amount.

The convict paid Rs 20 lakh in the form of multiple cheques. However, only one cheque for Rs 5 lakh was cleared by the bank, while the others were dishonoured. Kuldeep again approached the convict, but in vain and he thus approached the court. The court observed that the convict intentionally failed to discharge her liability towards the complainant. “It cannot be lost sight of that commercialisation and extensive business transactions have shot up the crime rate in society in various ways...,” reads the order.

The order goes on to say that such crimes not only affect the smooth running of business transactions, but sometimes also lead to extremities like bankruptcy of a concern or loss of earnings of the whole life. It thus went on to say that such convicts need to be dealt with a deterrent hand.