Respected JSDN Sir, I appreciate your concern regarding NBW. I would like to suggest you few thing that could be added to your petition at Supreme court.
1.Many of the fraud money lenders will prove with false witness that they have given huge amount of loan to the accused,even though the money given as loan is small.One peculiar case I have seen is that a garments worker getting a monthly salary of about 8000 Rs has taken a loan of 40000 Rs from a local money lender in an emergency situation when he has no time to think about other sources of money, to admit his wife to hospital.He handed over two blank cheques at that moment.Later the fraud money lender filled up one lakh in each cheques and with several witness he proved in a magistrate court that he has lended 2 lakh rupees.Now the court convicted that poor garments worker and ordered a decree fro recover of money.Now the poor garment employees family it self is spoiled . Can't it be made mandatory that loan should be given only through bank cheque irrespective of the loan amount?Then most of the fraud and illegal money transactions can be stopped.And poor people can be saved to a greater extent.
2.regarding misuse of cheques of the closed account:
I have gone through several high court judgements regarding cheque issued from a closed account (Cheque issued after two years from the date of closing of Bank account). In such a cases also several courts have taken the cognizance of the offence under NI act and punished the accused. Except the Bombay high court none of the courts have pointed out the banks responsibility to destroy the unused cheques and verify the status of used cheques at the time of closing the account. Now a days all the garment industries,IT companies,Security agencies,etc are all disbursing the salary through banks like CITI bank,ICICI banks etc.These accounts are zero balance salary accounts till salary is getting credited every month in to the account.These banks charge a considerable amount of fine once the salary stops crediting to that account for not maintaing the minimum balance of Rs 10000,else they will ask to maintain a minimum balance of 10000 Rs by converting the account in to a personal account,which even the lower salaried class cant offord and there is no way other than closing the account. While closing the account these banks dont take the responsibility of destructing the unused cheque leaves and take a declaration as I have destruced all the unused cheques.The uneducated people like security guards,garments emploees ,some times even IT engineers also simply throw the cheque books to garbage. After 15 days, they will send account closure intimation and ask them to send the unused cheque book for destruction.Cheques are already thrown to garbage because of lack of knowledge about the chequ frauds.
Why courts are not including the banks for these kind of carelessness when some one is accused in NI act due to negligence. Primarily the bank is responsible for destruction of unused cheques.The bank should also be made responsible in such cases.
Only one high court (to the best of my knowledge) raised this point and concluded that it is the banks primary responsibility to destroy the unused cheques at the time of closing the bank account.
3.Issue of cheques:
Few banks issue cheques to the customer even the previous cheque book is not fully used ( say 20 to 25 cheques are still not used).How fair is this?This encourage the customers to use the cheques carelessly.
Appreciating you concers and efforts to the ares of NI act victims.
Thanks in advance
Ramesh
