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The supreme court has taken note of tardy progress of several lakhs cheque bounce cases pending in all over of India and to stem the stall further it has issued following guidelines.
Following directions issued for the Courts seized off with similar cases:
1. All the subordinate Courts must make an endeavour to expedite the hearing of cases in a time bound manner which in turn will restore the confidence of the common man in the justice delivery system. When law expects something to be done within prescribed time limit, some efforts are required to be made to obey the mandate of law.
2. The learned Magistrate has the discretion under Section 143 of the N.I. Act either to follow a summary trial or summons trial. In case the Magistrate wants to conduct a summons trial, he should record the reasons after hearing the parties and proceed with the trial in the manner provided under the second proviso to Section 143 of the N.I. Act. Such reasons should necessarily be recorded by the Trial Court so that further litigation arraigning the mode of trial can be avoided.
3. The learned Judicial Magistrate should make all possible attempts to encourage compounding of offence at an early stage of litigation. In a prosecution under the Negotiable Instruments Act, the compensatory aspect of remedy must be given priority over the punitive aspect.
4. All the subordinate Courts should follow the directives of the Supreme Court issued in several cases scrupulously for effective conduct of trials and speedy disposal of cases.
5. Remitting the matter for de novo trial should be exercised as a last resort and should be used sparingly when there is grave miscarriage of justice in the light of illegality, irregularity, incompetence or any other defect which cannot be cured at an appellate stage. The appellate Court should be very cautious and exercise the discretion judiciously while remanding the matter for de novo trial.
6. While examining the nature of the trial conducted by the Trial Court for the purpose of determining whether it was summary trial or summons trial, the primary and predominant test to be adopted by the appellate Court should be whether it was only the substance of the evidence that was recorded or whether the complete record of the deposition of the witness in their chief examination, cross examination and re-examination in verbatim was faithfully placed on record. The appellate Court has to go through each and every minute detail of the Trial Court record and then examine the same independently and thoroughly to reach at a just and reasonable conclusion.

The supreme court seems to have come down heavily on the practice of reliving the settled dispute even after the decree of mutual divorce is granted.

In impugned order the development of settlement between the parties during pendency of the revision petition has not even been adverted to by the High Court – Once the matter was settled between the parties and the said settlement was given effect to in the form of divorce by mutual consent, no further dispute survived between the parties, though it was not so expressly recorded in the order of this Court No liberty was reserved by the wife to continue further proceedings against the husband – The wife after settling the matter estopped from continuing the proceedings.
The High Court was also requested to be aware of this practice.
See the full text of the decision at New Section of www.acelegalfirm.com.

23 Jan 2015
In a sort of victory for the liberty of social media activists on comments made in social media, the Supreme Court on Wednesday quashed FIRs registered by the BangaloreTraffic Police against a couple for posting “adverse” comments on its Facebook page.
A Bench of Justices V. Gopala Gowda and R. Banumathi quashed criminal prosecution against the couple, observing that they (the couple) were well within their rights to air their grievances on a public forum like Facebook.
“The page created by the traffic police on Facebook was a forum for the public to put forth their grievances. In our considered view, the appellants might have posted the comment online under the bona fide belief that it was within the permissible limits,” the 10-page judgment observed.
The judgment comes even as another Supreme Court Bench is hearing the legality of Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, which prescribes arrest and three years’ imprisonment for social media comments considered to be of “menacing character” or even annoying by the authorities.
The full text of the decision is available in www.acelegalfirm.com.