Delhi High Court: The Bench of Sunil Gaur, J. held that the trial court did not commit any error while summoning the petitioners in relation to a complaint under Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881 (dishonour of cheque).
Petitioners were independent directors of the accused company. MIC Electronics Ltd. They challenged the complaint filed under Section 138 and the consequent summoning order against them the ground that they were not in charge of the day-to-day business of MIC Electronics.
Vikas Gupta and Vipin Kalra, Advocates representing the petitioners submitted that they cannot be summoned in the complaints in question. Per contra, Satinder Singh Mathur, Advocate for the complainant submitted that there was an allegation that petitioners responsible for the day-to-day functioning of MIC Electronics.
The High Court referred to Standard Chartered Bank v. State of Maharashtra, (2016) 6 SCC 62 wherein the Supreme Court had permitted summoning of directors of the accused company. In the present case, since there were allegations against the petitioners as mentioned above, therefore the Court found no case to quash the complaint and summoning order. The petitions were disposed of by giving liberty to the petitioners to appear through their attorneys and counsels. [Somendra Khosla v. State, 2019 SCC OnLine Del 6585, Order dated 09-01-2019]
