Legal Guide by Akinchan Aggarwal, Advocate — B.A. (Hons.) Gold Medalist, LL.B. (University Rank 2), LL.M. (Dispute Resolution), UGC–NET, Ph.D. (Pursuing)
Most cheque bounce complaints that fail do not fail on the merits. They fail on the notice.
The cheque is genuine, the dishonour memo is on record, the debt is admitted in cross-examination — and the complaint is still dismissed, because the demand notice asked for the wrong figure, went to the wrong address, or was posted on the wrong day. The notice under proviso (b) to Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881 is not correspondence. It is an ingredient of the offence. Get it wrong and there is no offence to try.
This guide sets out what the notice must contain, the timeline that governs it, the judgments that decide the disputed points, and a full annotated draft you can work from.
The 2025 development you must know about.
In Kaveri Plastics v. Mahdoom Bawa Bahrudeen Noorul, 2025 INSC 1133 (Gavai, C.J. and Anjaria, J., 19 September 2025), the Supreme Court held that the demand in the statutory notice must be for the exact amount of the dishonoured cheque — and that even a typographical error is fatal. The cheque was for ₹1 crore; the notices demanded ₹2 crores; the complaint was held bad in law. If you draft these notices, this is the case that changes how carefully you proofread.
1. Why the Notice Is an Ingredient, Not a Formality
Section 138 creates the offence. But the three provisos convert it into a conditional offence — the offence is not complete until all three are satisfied:
- Proviso (a) — the cheque is presented to the bank within its validity period (three months from the date it bears).
- Proviso (b) — the payee or holder in due course makes a demand in writing for payment of the said amount of money, by giving a notice in writing to the drawer, within 30 days of receiving information from the bank about the return of the cheque as unpaid.
- Proviso (c) — the drawer fails to make payment within 15 days of receipt of that notice.
Only when proviso (c) is breached does the cause of action arise. That is why a defective notice is not a curable irregularity: it means the cause of action never came into existence at all. As the Supreme Court put it in Rahul Builders v. Arihant Fertilizers & Chemicals, (2008) 2 SCC 321, unless a notice is served in conformity with proviso (b), the complaint is simply not maintainable.
2. The 30–15–30 Timeline — And Which Date Starts Each Clock
Three periods run one after the other. Practitioners lose cases by starting the wrong clock.
| Step | Period | Clock starts from |
|---|---|---|
| Presentation | 3 months | The date written on the cheque |
| Demand notice | 30 days | The date the payee receives information from the bank about the dishonour — not the date on the cheque, and not the date on the return memo |
| Drawer's window to pay | 15 days | The date the drawer receives the notice — not the date you posted it |
| Complaint | 1 month | The date the cause of action arises under proviso (c) — i.e. the day after the 15 days expire |
Two traps sit inside this table.
Dispatch is not receipt. The 15 days under proviso (c) run from receipt by the drawer. A complaint filed on the assumption that the 15 days ran from the posting date is premature, and a premature complaint is liable to be dismissed even though the drawer never paid. Wait for the tracking report, calculate from the delivery date, and place the postal record on the file.
The complaint window is one month, not 30 days, and it is not elastic by default. Section 142(1)(b) requires the complaint within one month of the date on which the cause of action arises under clause (c). Since the 2002 amendment, the proviso to Section 142(1)(b) permits a court to take cognizance after that period if the complainant satisfies the court that he had sufficient cause for not filing within it. That is a discretion to be invoked with an application and an explanation — not a right, and not something to plan around.
3. The Amount — The Rule That Has Just Become Absolute
This is where Kaveri Plastics matters.
Proviso (b) requires a demand for "the said amount of money". The Supreme Court read those words back to the phrase "any amount of money" in the main body of Section 138 — and held that the two are inseparably linked. "The said amount" therefore means the cheque amount, exactly.
"It is mandatory that the demand in the statutory notice has to be the very amount of the cheque. After mentioning the exact cheque amount, the sender of the notice may claim in the notice amounts such as legal charges, notice charges, interest and such other additional amounts, provided the cheque amount is specified to be demanded for payment."
— Kaveri Plastics v. Mahdoom Bawa Bahrudeen Noorul, 2025 INSC 1133
The complainant there argued that the ₹2 crore figure was a cut-and-paste slip carried over from another notice, and that the cheque particulars were otherwise correct. The Court refused the explanation in terms that leave no room: the provision is penal, the offence is technical, and "even typographical error can be no defence."
The practical consequence is that the figure in your notice must be checked against the cheque itself, character by character, every single time. A notice drafted from a precedent for a different client is precisely how this error happens.
4. Interest, Costs and the Omnibus Notice Trap
You may claim more than the cheque amount. What you may not do is merge it into a single undifferentiated figure.
The governing authority is Suman Sethi v. Ajay K. Churiwal, (2000) 2 SCC 380. The distinction it draws is between severable and inseparable claims:
| How the notice is worded | Effect |
|---|---|
| "Pay the cheque amount of ₹5,00,000, and in addition ₹25,000 towards interest and ₹5,000 towards notice charges" | Valid. The cheque amount is separately specified; the additional claims are severable and do not vitiate the notice. |
| "Pay ₹5,30,000 being the amount due" | Bad. No demand has been made for the cheque amount at all. The notice falls short of proviso (b). |
| "Pay the total outstanding of ₹8,72,000 under the running account" | Bad — this is the Rahul Builders situation. A demand for a global account balance is not a demand for the said amount. |
The drafting rule that follows is simple and worth adopting as a habit: demand the cheque amount in its own sentence, in figures and in words, before you claim anything else. Everything additional goes in a separate, clearly labelled paragraph.
5. Several Cheques in One Notice
Where three or four cheques from the same drawer bounce together, a single notice may cover all of them — provided each cheque is separately identified and each cheque amount is separately demanded. What is fatal is the consolidation: "the said cheques having a total value of ₹12,00,000, pay the said sum."
There is also a timing problem that consolidation conceals. Each cheque may have been returned on a different date, which means each has its own 30-day notice window and, ultimately, its own cause of action. If one cheque's window has already closed, bundling it into a common notice does not revive it — and may complicate the notice for the others.
Unless the cheques were all returned on the same date under the same memo, the safer course is a separate notice per cheque. It costs a few hundred rupees more and removes an entire category of defence.
6. Address and Service — What You Must Prove, and What Is Presumed
Service is the second most common ground of attack after the amount, and the law here is more favourable to the complainant than most people assume.
M/s Ajeet Seeds Ltd. v. K. Gopala Krishnaiah, (2014) 12 SCC 685 settled two points:
- Where the notice is sent by registered post to the correct address, Section 27 of the General Clauses Act, 1897 raises a presumption of service, reinforced by Section 114 of the Evidence Act (now Section 119 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023).
- It is not necessary to aver in the complaint that the accused evaded service or contributed to the notice being returned unserved. Whether service was effected or refused is a matter of evidence at trial, and a complaint cannot be quashed at the summoning stage merely because it lacks a recital of service.
In K. Bhaskaran v. Sankaran Vaidhyan Balan, (1999) 7 SCC 510, the Court held that proviso (b) requires the payee to give notice, and a drawer cannot take advantage of his own conduct in refusing or avoiding it. And in C.C. Alavi Haji v. Palapetty Muhammed, (2007) 6 SCC 555, a three-Judge Bench held that a drawer who genuinely did not receive the notice retains a remedy — he may pay the cheque amount within 15 days of receiving the summons from the court, and cannot then be convicted. That decision was reaffirmed in N. Parameswaran Unni v. G. Kannan, (2017) 5 SCC 737.
The presumption protects you only if the address is right.
Section 27 operates where the notice is "properly addressed". Use the address on the cheque, the address in the agreement or invoice, and the last known residential or registered office address — and send to all of them. For a company, use the registered office as shown on the MCA portal, and take a print of the master data on the day of dispatch. Send by speed post with acknowledgement due and courier, and by email where you have one. Preserve the postal receipts, the tracking printout, the courier POD and the delivery confirmation. These become exhibits.
7. When the Drawer Is a Company
The drawer is the company. The notice must therefore be addressed to the company at its registered office. It is good practice to name and address the directors and the signatory as well, and to set out the averment required by Section 141 — that they were in charge of and responsible to the company for the conduct of its business at the relevant time.
But note the position on necessity: in Krishna Texport & Capital Markets Ltd. v. Ila A. Agrawal, (2015) 8 SCC 28, the Supreme Court held that individual notices to directors are not a statutory requirement. The mandatory notice is to the drawer — the company. Notices to directors are prudent, not jurisdictional. Conversely, if you notice the directors but fail to notice the company, the complaint fails at the root.
8. A Defective Notice Is Not Always the End
One point of relief, and it is a significant one. In MSR Leathers v. S. Palaniappan, (2013) 1 SCC 177, a three-Judge Bench held that a payee who has issued a notice and not filed a complaint is not barred from presenting the cheque again within its validity and issuing a fresh notice on the fresh dishonour. Sadanandan Bhadran v. Madhavan Sunil Kumar, (1998) 6 SCC 514, which had held that there could be only one cause of action, was overruled.
So if you discover a defect in the notice — the wrong figure, an omnibus demand, a bad address — and the cheque is still within its three-month validity, the practical answer is often to re-present the cheque and start again cleanly. What you cannot do is fix it by filing a complaint on a bad notice and hoping the point is not taken.
9. The Annotated Model Notice
What follows is a working draft. The commentary after each clause explains why the clause is worded as it is. Adapt it — do not use it as a template to cut and paste, for reasons Kaveri Plastics makes obvious.
[LETTERHEAD OF THE ADVOCATE]
Ref. No. ______
Dated: ____________
BY SPEED POST WITH A/D, BY COURIER AND BY EMAIL
To,
1. Shri/Smt. ______________________ (the drawer)
S/o, D/o, W/o ______________________
R/o ______________________________________
2. [Where the drawer is a company]
M/s ______________________ Private Limited,
through its Managing Director,
Registered Office: ______________________________________
SUBJECT: LEGAL NOTICE UNDER SECTION 138 OF THE NEGOTIABLE INSTRUMENTS ACT, 1881
Sir/Madam,
Under instructions from and on behalf of my client, Shri/M/s ______________________, R/o ______________________ (hereinafter "my client"), I serve upon you the following notice:
1. That my client is engaged in the business of ______________________ and you have been known to my client in the course of the said business since ______________________.
2. That on ____________ you approached my client and my client, at your request, advanced/supplied ______________________ against consideration in the sum of ₹____________ (Rupees ______________________ only). The said transaction is evidenced by ______________________ [invoice / agreement / ledger account / receipt] dated ____________.
3. That in discharge of the aforesaid legally enforceable debt and liability, you issued to my client the following cheque:
| Cheque No. | Date | Amount | Drawn on |
|---|---|---|---|
| __________ | __________ | ₹__________ | ________ Bank, ________ Branch |
4. That my client presented the said cheque for encashment through his bankers, ______________________ Bank, ______________________ Branch, and the said cheque was returned unpaid vide Return Memo dated ____________ with the remarks "______________________". My client received information of the said dishonour from his bankers on ____________.
5. That the dishonour of the said cheque is on account of your own act and default, and you have thereby committed an offence punishable under Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881.
6. That I therefore call upon you, on behalf of my client, to pay to my client the sum of ₹____________ (Rupees ______________________ only), being the amount of the aforesaid dishonoured cheque, within fifteen (15) days of the receipt of this notice.
7. That in addition to and separately from the aforesaid cheque amount, you are further liable to pay to my client a sum of ₹____________ towards interest at ____% per annum and a sum of ₹____________ towards the costs of this notice, which sums my client also calls upon you to pay.
8. That in the event of your failure to make payment of the said cheque amount within the said period of fifteen days from receipt of this notice, my client shall be constrained to initiate criminal proceedings against you under Section 138 read with Sections 141 and 142 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881, before the competent court, and to take such other civil proceedings for recovery as may be advised, entirely at your risk as to costs and consequences.
9. That a copy of this notice is retained in my office for record and further necessary action.
______________________
Advocate
Enrolment No. ____________
Clause-by-Clause Commentary
| Clause | Why it is worded that way |
|---|---|
| Mode line | Multiple modes create multiple chances of service and multiple exhibits. The registered/speed post despatch is what attracts the Section 27 presumption; the courier and email are corroboration. |
| Clause 2 | Establishes a legally enforceable debt or liability. Without this, the presumption under Section 139 has nothing to attach to, and the defence will say the cheque was security or blank. Identify the underlying document. |
| Clause 3 | Full cheque particulars. The date on the cheque fixes the three-month presentation window under proviso (a) and must be stated. |
| Clause 4 | The most under-drafted clause in practice. Notice that it states two separate dates: the date of the return memo and the date on which the payee received information of dishonour from his bank. Proviso (b) runs from the latter. Pleading it expressly makes the notice self-evidently within time on its face. |
| Clause 6 | The operative demand. It is a standalone sentence, it states the cheque amount in figures and in words, and it expressly identifies that sum as the amount of the dishonoured cheque. This is the clause Kaveri Plastics is about. Check it against the cheque before signing. |
| Clause 7 | Interest and costs are placed in a separate clause, with separate figures, and expressly "in addition to and separately from" the cheque amount. This is the Suman Sethi severability requirement made visible on the face of the document. |
| Clause 8 | States the consequence and, importantly, ties the 15 days to receipt, matching proviso (c). Do not write "within 15 days hereof" — it invites an argument that the notice fixed a period different from the statutory one. |
10. The Errors That Get Complaints Dismissed
| Error | Consequence |
|---|---|
| Notice demands a figure different from the cheque amount | Fatal. Kaveri Plastics — typographical error is no defence. |
| Single consolidated demand for cheque amount plus interest | Fatal. No demand for the "said amount" has been made. |
| Notice issued more than 30 days after information of dishonour | Fatal. Proviso (b) not satisfied. |
| Complaint filed before the 15 days from receipt expire | Premature — liable to be dismissed; cause of action had not arisen. |
| Complaint filed beyond one month of cause of action, with no condonation application | Barred unless sufficient cause is shown under the proviso to Section 142(1)(b). |
| Notice sent only to the directors, not to the drawer company | Fatal. The mandatory notice is to the drawer. |
| No averment of a legally enforceable debt or liability | Weakens the Section 139 presumption and opens the "security cheque" defence. |
| Postal receipts and tracking record not preserved | You cannot prove despatch to the correct address, and the Section 27 presumption never arises. |
Conclusion
A Section 138 complaint is won or lost long before the first date of hearing. By the time the matter reaches evidence, the notice is a fixed fact — it either satisfied proviso (b) or it did not, and no amount of advocacy repairs it.
After Kaveri Plastics, the discipline required is close to clerical: read the cheque, copy the figure, read it back against the cheque, and only then sign. Keep the cheque amount in its own sentence. Keep interest and costs in another. Calculate the 30 days from the day your client learnt of the dishonour, and the 15 days from the day the drawer received the notice. Send it to every address you have, and keep every receipt.
Do that, and the statutory presumptions under Sections 118 and 139 do most of the work for you. Skip it, and a perfectly good debt becomes a dismissed complaint on a point that had nothing to do with whether the money was owed.
Disclaimer: This article is intended for general information and legal education only and does not constitute legal advice, and the draft notice reproduced above is an illustrative model that must be adapted to the facts of each case by a qualified advocate. The law stated is based on the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881 and the judgments cited; readers should refer to the bare provisions and the full text of those judgments, including Kaveri Plastics v. Mahdoom Bawa Bahrudeen Noorul, 2025 INSC 1133, before relying on any proposition stated here. Procedural requirements and local practice vary between courts. Anyone facing or contemplating proceedings under Section 138 should consult an advocate. Please read our Disclaimer for more details.
