31/05/2018
The offence under Sec.138 of the NI Act is not a natural crime like hurt or other offence under the Indian Peanl Code, but, it is an offence created by a legal fiction in the statute, transformed civil liability into criminal liability. The onus of proving all the ingredients of the offence in a criminal case is on the prosecution. When an accused person is charged with having committed an offence, it is for the prosecution to prove all the ingredients of the offence. It is only when this burden is discharged, the accused has to explain the essential elements in the prosecution case which would negative it. Even after the civil liability transformed into criminal liability under restricted conditions by amendment of the NI Act, by introducing the relevant provisions, the strict liability provided for criminal cases has not changed.
