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Woman who sought 20 adjournments fined by HC
Seeking repeated adjournments and allegedly unnecessarily harassing the complainant has landed a bill discounting agent in trouble. HT Correspondent reports.
Seeking repeated adjournments and allegedly unnecessarily harassing the complainant has landed a bill discounting agent in trouble.
Justice J.H. Bhatia imposed a fine of Rs 5,000 on Lily Jassawalla who sought adjournment of her case on 20 occasions citing various reasons.
"This is mere harassment of the original complainant who always remains present in the court,' observed Justice Bhatia.
Jassawalla, a bill discounting agent, had two transactions with Dinshaw Merchant on 1996 amounting to Rs 2.56 lakh.
She issued two post-dated bills to Merchant drawn on Standard Batteries Limited.
When Merchant went to discount the bills, he was informed by the Standard Batteries Limited that the bills were already discounted.
When Jassawalla did not respond to notice, Merchant lodged a complaint with the Sakinaka police.
The police filed the charge sheet against her. They also attached a correspondence with the Reserve Bank of India which said it had received similar complaints against Jassawalla.
Before the trial began, Merchant passed away in 2001. His wife Bakhtawar pursued the case with the magistrate’s court.
In 2006, Jassawalla filed a discharge application with the Andheri metropolitan magistrate’s court.
The magistrate dismissed her discharge application observing that there was prima facie evidence against her, said Ganesh Sovani, advocate for Merchant.
Even the sessions court rejected Jassawalla’s application, she then approached the high court in 2009.
During every hearing, Jassawalla sought adjournment of the case saying that either her advocate was in another court or was not in town, said Sovani. This way she got the matter adjourned on 20 occasions.
On Friday, when Jassawalla again sought adjournment, Sovani sought that she should be penalised. Justice Bhatia adjourned the matter after imposing a fine on her.
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