MUMBAI: Twenty-one years after a Mumbai-based company’s cheque issued to its creditor bounced, a metropolitan magistrate has sentenced the firm’s 54-year-old managing director Rajiv Khandelwal to a year in prison and asked him to shell out Rs 9 crore as compensation. Metropolitan magistrate R S Aradhye directed that if Khandelwal fails to pay the compensation amount within one month, he will have to serve an additional three months in prison.Khandelwal’s lawyers urged that since it is his first offence, he should be given the benefit of probation. The trial court rejected the plea. “Considering the nature of the offence, which is a white-collar crime…I am of the view that the accused does not deserve to be extended benefits of the Probation Act,” said magistrate Aradhye.
Khandelwal’s lawyers argued that it did not owe any money to the complainant and the cheques were not signed by him. Advocate H H Nagi and I B Singh, representing the complainant, said that in various court proceedings, the fact of inter corporate deposit was not disputed. The magistrate pointed out that the decree ordered by the high court asking Pan Asia to pay Rs 13.6 crore to Ganesh Benzoplast was not challenged by the accused in the Supreme Court. The magistrate also referred to apex court judgments, which had rued that once the accused admitted their liability in any legal proceedings, they cannot take a contrary stand in another case. “Having regard to the facts, circumstances, evidence available on record and the legal position, I have come to the conclusion that so far as the legal liability of the accused and the issuance of disputed cheques are concerned, nothing remains unclear or cloudy,” said the magistrate.
Two cheques amounting to Rs 5.50 crore issued by Khandelwal’s company Pan Asia Industries Ltd had been dishonoured in 1996. The court referred to the fact that the case was over two decades old and the Bombay high court as well as the sessions court had said that the trial was delayed by the accused. The magistrate said the value of money in the cheques would have more than doubled in 20 years. “I find that the complainant is entitled to compensation of more than the amount of the cheques,” the magistrate added.