No. 4/05.05.2009.

HON’BLE JUSTICE SRI A. CHAKRABARTI, PRESIDENT.

Heard the Ld. Advocate for the Appellant and the Ld. Advocate for the Respondent.  It appears that the dispute revolves around an instruction by the Complainant to his bankers to stop payment of a cheque issued by him earlier.  Apparently Bank did not respond to the said instruction of stopping payment and the cheque was allowed to be encashed.  The Ld. Counsel for the Appellant argues that in the stop payment instruction only the cheque number was given and neither the date nor the amount was mentioned.  In the circumstances it is argued that under the Negotiable Instrument Act the instruction being not complete, the Bank was not liable to follow the said instruction.

We have considered the said contention and we find that it is not the case of the Bank as made out in the Written Version filed before the Forum that it could not identify the cheque only from the number and it not also the case that in the absence of the date or amount the identification of the cheque is difficult or impossible.  The whole argument of the Bank is that the instruction being on 03.08.2005 against encashment of the cheque, when the cheque was produced before the Bank much after the said 03.08.2005 and the instruction for such a long time was not still binding on the Bank.

On behalf of the Respondent the judgement in case of Arun Sameer Associated pvt. Ltd. – vs – Regional Manager, State Bank of India decided by the Hon’ble National Commission in First Appeal No. 47 of 1994 on 19.01.1995 laying down the responsibility of the Bank.

Considering the aforesaid argument of the respective parties and perusing the materials on record we are of the opinion that the Bank has not produced any acceptable reason for not following the instruction of the Complainant to stop payment of the particular cheque particularly when the identification of the cheque was not found difficult by the Bank.  The technical objections are also not acceptable as in the complaint itself the Complainant has stated that he sent stop payment instruction “when he remember that the date on the cheque was not mentioned”.  In this factual background we do not find any reason for the Bank to allow encashment of the cheque lying thereafter sometime thereafter in June 2006.  The technical objection raised on behalf of the Bank relying on the Negotiable Instrument Act does not require detail discussion as on facts we do not find any defence of the Bank.  In the circumstances we are of the opinion that no interference with the impugned judgement is required by us and the appeal appears to be frivolous one and is accordingly dismissed on cost assessed at Rs. 500/-