Written by: Prakhar Rai, Advocate | Founder, My Legal Pal | Enrolled with the Bar Council of India | NLSIU Bangalore alumnus
Last reviewed: 21 October 2026
The cheque bounces and you’re angry. Fair enough. So the notice you draft asks for the cheque amount, interest from the due date, something for the delay, the lawyer’s fee, the notice charges. It feels thorough.
It’s also where a lot of Section 138 notices go wrong.
Look at what the section actually says. The offence is complete only when the drawer fails to pay “the said amount of money” within 15 days of receiving your notice. The said amount is the amount of the cheque. If your notice asks for a different figure, the accused gets to argue that the demand the law requires was never made.
A single wrong figure is enough
Kaveri Plastics v. Mahdoom Bawa Bahrudeen Noorul (2025 INSC 1133, decided 19 September 2025) is the case to know. The cheque was for ₹1,00,00,000 and came back for insufficient funds. Both demand notices asked for ₹2,00,00,000. The cheque number, date and bank were all correct.
The complainant called it a typing error. The Supreme Court wasn’t buying it, partly because the same mistake appeared in both notices. The Court said it is “mandatory that the demand in the statutory notice has to be the very amount of the cheque”, and that “even typographical error can be no defence.” It also said the usual idea of reading a notice as a whole doesn’t help when the amount itself is wrong. The complaint stayed quashed.
That’s the whole logic. Section 138 creates a criminal offence, and the notice is a condition of it. Courts read conditions like that tightly.
But the older case allowed extras
It did, and you should know about it. In Suman Sethi v. Ajay K. Churiwal ((2000) 2 SCC 380), the cheque was for ₹20,00,000. The notice also asked for ₹1,500 as incidental charges and ₹340 as notice charges. The Supreme Court upheld the notice because the cheque amount was clearly stated and the extras could be separated from it.
So interest and costs don’t automatically kill a notice. I still leave them out.
One reason is that the same judgment warns against an omnibus demand, where the notice never says what is due under the dishonoured cheque. A single lump sum of “cheque plus interest plus costs” looks a lot like that. After Kaveri Plastics, I’d rather not spend a hearing arguing that mine was different.
The bigger reason is that extras buy you nothing. If the drawer pays the cheque amount within 15 days, the Section 138 problem is over, whatever else the notice asked for. If they don’t pay, the court has its own tools: a fine of up to twice the cheque amount, and interim compensation under Section 143A. Interest and costs are a civil claim and can wait for a civil case. If you want to keep them alive, one line saying all rights are reserved does the job and demands nothing. For the civil route, see our page on legal notice for recovery of money.
Other ways the demand goes wrong
Several cheques bounced and the notice asks for one total? Each cheque is its own dishonour. My view is that the notice should list every cheque with its own number, date, bank and amount, and that no figure should appear which isn’t the amount of one specific cheque.
“You owe us ₹X in outstanding dues” is how a business letter talks. A Section 138 demand ties the amount to a cheque by number, date and bank, says when and why it came back, and asks for that amount.
And the clock. The drawer has 15 days from receiving the notice, so write “within 15 days of receipt of this notice”. The notice itself has to go out within 30 days of the bank’s information that the cheque was returned. The full sequence is on our cheque bounce legal notice page, so I’ll leave it there.
What the demand should look like
Something like this, adjusted to your facts:
You are called upon to pay ₹[amount exactly as on the cheque] ([in words] only), being the amount of Cheque No. [number] dated [date], drawn on [bank and branch], which was returned unpaid on [date] with the remark “[reason on the return memo]”, within 15 days of receipt of this notice. Failing this, my client will proceed under Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881. All rights and remedies are reserved.
No interest, no damages, no fees. Before it goes out, put the cheque and the notice next to each other and read the amount in both, in digits and in words.
Questions I get
Can I claim interest in the notice? You can, and Suman Sethi may protect you if the cheque amount is clearly stated. I’d still leave it out and claim interest in a civil case.
Is a typing error in the amount really fatal? In Kaveri Plastics it was.
I’ve already sent a notice with extras. What now? Get a lawyer to read it today. If the cheque amount is stated clearly and apart from everything else, it may still hold. If the 30-day window is open, a corrected notice is the usual fix. If the window has closed, the answer turns on the exact wording and I wouldn’t guess without reading it. If you want the next one drafted properly, you can send a legal notice online.
I’m Prakhar Rai, an advocate enrolled with the Bar Council of India. My Legal Pal is an international team of contract lawyers with US law experience. We are not a US law firm, and this article covers Indian law only. I read the Kaveri Plastics and Suman Sethi judgments for the passages quoted here. I haven’t surveyed every High Court decision on extra amounts in notices, so treat this as general information and not advice on your case.
Sources: Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881, sections 138, 139 and 143A; Kaveri Plastics v. Mahdoom Bawa Bahrudeen Noorul, 2025 INSC 1133; Suman Sethi v. Ajay K. Churiwal, (2000) 2 SCC 380.
