Lawfully Yours: By Retired Justice K Chandru | Dishonoured cheque a penal offence, offender can be jailed
Your legal questions answered by Justice K Chandru, former Judge of the Madras High Court Do you have a question? Email us at citizen.dtnext@dt.co.in
Dishonoured cheque a penal offence, offender can be jailed
A person borrowed some money from me. The transaction happened through a bank transfer. He issued a cheque and it was returned from the bank due to insufficient funds. No promissory note or any other deed was made. Only two things I have. A returned cheque and bank transaction details. With this, is there any possibility of recovering my money? Is it possible to proceed legally?
— Bhuvan Karthik, Kancheepuram
If you are within time you can file a complaint before the jurisdictional magistrate court under Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act. Not providing resources for honouring the cheque issued is a penal offence. The court can not only give a prison sentence to the offender but also order the return of your amount.
Inheritance law doesn’t discriminate between son and daughter unlike a will
Given that the property was bought with the retirement amount of the father, there should not be any qualms about dividing it equally between sons and daughters. But in the case of the son’s wife and her family targeting elderly citizens for registering a part of the land in the name of the daughters and coercing the father and daughters into re-registration of land, what is the legal procedure to sort this issue out? The son’s wife and their family are not just against registering land in the daughters’ name but also against providing the daughters with money obtained through selling the land. When can a daughter not claim her father’s property? Is there any different law when it comes to claiming agricultural land?
— A Mary Daisy, Chennai
Today, no law discriminates between a son and a daughter from inheritance of the property from their parents if they had not written a will during their lifetime. But what happens is during their lifetime the son or daughter influences their parents and enters into many paper arrangements to defeat the law. If those arrangements are sham or nominal or fraud you can challenge it in a court of law. But if the parents themselves were willing partners in that game, you would have to grin and bear and leave the matter.
