Supreme Court grants interim bail to a man accused in a 1999 Rs 20 lakh cheque bounce case, claiming he was wrongly identified. He says the real issuer was someone else with a similar name.
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NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court of India granted interim relief to a man named CK Abdurahiman, who says he has been wrongly blamed for issuing a bounced cheque worth Rs 20 lakh. He says that the cheque was not issued by him, but by another person with a similar name: CK Abdullakutty.
On June 23, the Supreme Court Bench of Justice Sandeep Mehta and Justice Joymalya Bagchi heard Abdurahiman’s appeal.
The Court accepted his request to challenge the conviction, put a hold (suspended) on his sentence, and granted him bail. But the Court made it clear that Abdurahiman must first deposit half the cheque amount — Rs 10 lakh — with the Court registry.
Earlier, the Kerala High Court had said there was enough proof to show that CK Abdullakutty, who signed the cheque, and CK Abdurahiman, who was charged in the case, were the same person.
The High Court, in its December 2024 order, dismissed Abdurahiman’s argument and said it was a “strange defence” of mistaken identity.
The High Court gave some reasons for this decision. It said three bank witnesses clearly pointed to Abdurahiman as the man who signed the cheque. Also, both the names — “Abdullakutty” and “Abdurahiman” — were linked to the same house name.
Interestingly, even though the High Court admitted that the signature on the bounced cheque was not the same as Abdurahiman’s known signature, it still concluded that he could be guilty.
The Court observed that:
“Abdurahiman may not be in the habit of putting identical signs all the time.”
So, based on this, the High Court convicted Abdurahiman under the cheque bounce law — Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act — in a case filed way back in 1999.
However, keeping in mind that the matter was very old and only related to a cheque bounce, the High Court reduced the punishment. Instead of jail time already given by the lower court, the High Court sentenced him to only one day of simple imprisonment — “till the rising of the Court” — and ordered him to pay Rs 23 lakh as compensation, even though the original cheque amount was Rs 20 lakh.
To understand the background — the case started because of a deal in 1998. A man named Mukkath Marakkar Haji said that he had made an agreement with Abdurahiman to sell a rubber estate.
As part of that deal, a cheque worth Rs 20 lakh was issued to Haji in May 1999. But in November 1999, that cheque bounced due to “insufficient funds.”
Here’s an important detail — the cheque came from the account of someone named C Abdullakutty. But when Haji sent a legal notice in November 1999, it was addressed to Abdurahiman, and he was the one charged in the court case for dishonouring the cheque.
A trial was conducted, and in March 2004, a Magistrate Court in Perinthalmanna found Abdurahiman guilty under Section 138.
But in 2006, when the case went to a Sessions Court, that court canceled the conviction and said he was not guilty.
The complainant, however, was not satisfied and went to the Kerala High Court, which restored the conviction against Abdurahiman in December 2024.
Now, Abdurahiman has approached the Supreme Court and says that he is innocent. He clearly states that:
“Neither was he a party to the 1998 agreement nor was he the one who issued the dishonoured cheque or the one who held the bank account from which it was issued.”
The next hearing of this case in the Supreme Court is scheduled for August 12.
Abdurahiman was represented by-
Sriram Parakkat, Deepak Prakash, Gayathri Muraleedharan, Nachiketa Vajpayee, Divyangna Malik, Jyoti Pandey, Rahul Suresh, Shivangi Rajawat, Chetan Jadon, Parthasarthy, Ridhika, and Samridhi Srivastava.
Cheque Bounce Cases: New Supreme Court Guidelines
CASE TITLE:
CK Abdurahiman @ Manu v. Mukkath Marakkar Haji & Anr.
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