Cheque Bounce in India: Inside the Section 138 Litigation Crisis

Last updated: 28 September 2026. Data as of 23 September 2026. Rewritten from scratch. The eCourtsIndia index now holds the district-court Section 138 docket itself, so this post replaces the earlier “visible appellate tip” estimate with a full count, a method reconciliation and the Supreme Court’s September 2025 directions.

Under Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881, a cheque that bounces for lack of funds becomes a crime if the drawer does not pay within 15 days of a written demand. The penalty is up to two years’ imprisonment, a fine of up to twice the cheque amount, or both. In December 2024, 43,05,932 such cases were pending.

On 23 September 2026 the eCourtsIndia index held 1,34,61,226 court records that cite Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881, and 53,33,191 of them were pending. Narrow that to the case codes courts use for the complaint itself and you get 1,16,26,609 records, 46,31,235 pending. More than 99 percent sit in district and magistrate courts. The government told the Lok Sabha in December 2024 that 43,05,932 cheque bounce cases were pending nationwide. This post explains why the numbers differ, where the backlog sits, how old it is, and what the Supreme Court ordered in Sanjabij Tari v. Kishore S. Borcar to bring it down. eCourtsIndia is a private platform, not the Government’s eCourts portal (ecourts.gov.in).

Key takeaways

• 1,34,61,226 indexed records cite NI Act Section 138; 53,33,191 are pending (23 September 2026).
• The complaint cases alone (case codes CC, COP, SC and ST) number 1,16,26,609, with 46,31,235 pending. That is the closest index equivalent of the official pendency figure.
• Rajasthan has the most pending records (9,08,996), followed by Maharashtra, Gujarat and Delhi. The busiest single court is the Judicial Magistrate court at Jaipur Metro headquarters.
• The backlog is young: about 50% of pending records were filed in 2023, 2024 or 2025.
• The Supreme Court’s 25 September 2025 directions require dasti and electronic summons, online payment links, graded compounding costs and Section 138 dashboards in Delhi, Mumbai and Calcutta.

What is Section 138 of the NI Act?

Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881 makes it a criminal offence to issue a cheque, for a debt or other liability, that is returned unpaid for insufficient funds or because it exceeds the arranged amount, if the drawer fails to pay within 15 days of receiving a written demand. The provision was inserted in 1988 with a maximum sentence of one year or a fine of up to twice the cheque amount. A 2002 amendment raised the maximum sentence to two years, made the offence compoundable under Section 147, and pushed courts towards summary trial under Section 143. A 2018 amendment added Section 143A, which lets the trial court order the accused to pay interim compensation of up to 20 percent of the cheque amount. The same amendment added Section 148, which lets an appellate court order a convicted appellant to deposit at least 20 percent of the fine or compensation.

Section 138 time limits, step by step

1. Present the cheque to the bank within six months of its date, or within its validity period if that is shorter (Section 138(a)).
2. If it bounces, send the drawer a written demand notice within 30 days of receiving the bank’s information that the cheque was returned unpaid (Section 138(b)).
3. Give the drawer 15 days from receiving the notice to pay (Section 138(c)).
4. If the drawer does not pay, file the complaint within one month after those 15 days end. A court may accept a late complaint if the complainant shows sufficient cause for the delay (Section 142(1)(b)).
5. File before a Metropolitan Magistrate or a Judicial Magistrate of the first class (Section 142(1)(c)). If the cheque was delivered for collection through an account, the case goes to the court for the area where the payee’s bank branch that holds the account is situated (Section 142(2)(a)).
6. Expect interim money orders: during the trial the court may order interim compensation of up to 20% of the cheque amount (Section 143A), and on an appeal against conviction the appellate court may order a deposit of at least 20% of the fine or compensation (Section 148).

Section 139 presumes that the cheque was given for a debt or liability. The accused can rebut that presumption with evidence. These are general steps, and an advocate can advise on the facts of a particular cheque.

In practice, a Section 138 complaint is often used to recover money, with the backing of criminal law. Banks, NBFCs, landlords, suppliers and individuals use it, and the Supreme Court’s 2025 guidelines encourage early payment and settlement. As of 31 December 2019, 35.16 lakh of India’s 2.31 crore pending criminal cases were Section 138 cases, about 15%, the Supreme Court noted in its suo motu judgment of 16 April 2021. You can read the bare text of the Act on eCourtsIndia’s IndiaCode mirror.

How many cheque bounce cases are pending in India?

Counting cheque bounce cases sounds simple. It is not, because the same case can carry different codes in different states, and many records that mention Section 138 are appeals, bail applications or civil suits rather than complaints. Here are three counts from the same index on the same day, next to the latest official figure.

What is counted	Search used	Records	Pending
Every record that cites the Act and Section 138	query: “Negotiable Instruments” AND 138	1,34,61,226	53,33,191
Complaint cases only, all common complaint codes	same query, caseTypes CC, COP, SC, ST	1,16,26,609	46,31,235
Complaint cases coded CC only (separate query)	same query, caseTypes CC	98,81,553	39,10,771
Official pendency (government reply to the Lok Sabha)	December 2024, as reported by The Tribune	n/a	43,05,932

The broadest count, 1,34,61,226 records, includes everything that cites the provision. Besides complaints, it picks up 4,93,101 civil suits that mention a dishonoured cheque, 2,80,302 records with the CA code, 1,90,404 criminal miscellaneous applications, 80,796 criminal appeals, 65,107 bail applications and a long tail of revisions and writs. It is the right number for sizing all litigation that touches Section 138. It overstates the number of complaints.

The complaint count, 1,16,26,609 records, is the closest match to what most people mean by “cheque bounce cases”. Courts do not use one code for a Section 138 complaint (see our guide to case-type codes such as CC, COP, SC and ST). Most use CC (98,85,773 records within the complaint query; a separate CC-only query returned 98,81,553, because counts from separate queries on very large result sets can differ slightly). Courts in Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand also use COP (7,35,840). Courts in Madhya Pradesh, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh often register them as summary or summons trials, SC (5,11,809) and ST (4,93,187). Within the complaint query, CC, COP, SC and ST add up exactly to the 1,16,26,609 complaint records.

The CC-only count, 98,81,553 records with 39,10,771 pending, is the method used in our developer guide, Cheque Bounce at Scale. It is precise and easy to reproduce, which is why a tracking dashboard should start there, but it misses the states that use other codes. None of the three counts is wrong. They answer different questions, and any report should say which one it uses.

How the backlog has grown

In December 2024, the government told the Lok Sabha that 43,05,932 cheque bounce cases were pending in Indian courts (reported by The Tribune, 16 November 2025). The same backlog has been measured several times since 2008.

As of	Figure	Source
Oct 2008	More than 38 lakh cheque bouncing cases pending	Law Commission 213th Report, quoted in Damodar S. Prabhu (2010)
31 Dec 2019	35.16 lakh of 2.31 crore pending criminal cases (about 15%)	Supreme Court, In Re: Expeditious Trial of Cases under Section 138, 16 Apr 2021
Dec 2024	43,05,932 pending	Government reply to the Lok Sabha, reported by The Tribune
1 Sep 2025	Delhi 6,50,283; Mumbai 1,17,190; Calcutta 2,65,985 (district courts)	NJDG, cited in Sanjabij Tari
23 Sep 2026	46,31,235 pending complaint cases; 53,33,191 pending records citing s.138	eCourtsIndia index (see Methodology)

Why the index shows more pending cases than the official figure

The complaint count shows 46,31,235 pending records against the 43,05,932 the government reported in December 2024. Three things explain most of the gap. The official figure is almost two years older, and the pending docket has kept growing: the index holds 11,02,890 pending records filed in 2025 alone. A record’s status in the index is only as current as its last refresh, so some matters marked pending may since have been disposed (see what “pending” means in court records). And the two sources classify and de-duplicate records in their own ways. Treat the official number as the authoritative pendency figure for December 2024, and the index as a detailed, record-level map of the same docket as of 23 September 2026. For today’s official pendency, check the National Judicial Data Grid.

Which states have the most pending cheque bounce cases?

State	Pending records	All records	Pending share	Explore
Rajasthan	9,08,996	15,87,237	57.3%	search
Maharashtra	6,58,208	24,28,550	27.1%	search
Gujarat	5,91,981	20,47,000	28.9%	search
Delhi	4,86,708	10,81,211	45.0%	search
Uttar Pradesh	4,32,016	6,57,846	65.7%	search
West Bengal	3,38,023	5,65,161	59.8%	search
Haryana	2,97,170	7,31,749	40.6%	search
Madhya Pradesh	2,80,658	7,18,028	39.1%	search
Karnataka	2,17,722	5,90,321	36.9%	search
Kerala	2,05,042	6,24,212	32.8%	search
Punjab	1,99,143	7,29,180	27.3%	search
Tamil Nadu	1,26,987	2,87,713	44.1%	search

Rajasthan tops the pending list with 9,08,996 records, 57.3% of its Section 138 docket. Maharashtra and Gujarat have the largest dockets overall (24,28,550 and 20,47,000 records) but have cleared more of them. Delhi, a single city, carries 4,86,708 pending records, more than every state outside the top three. The pattern appears to follow commercial and lending activity: where retail credit and trade credit are dense, cheque bounce complaints pile up.

Delhi is also where the Supreme Court drew its numbers. The Sanjabij Tari judgment recorded more than 6.5 lakh Section 138 cases pending in Delhi’s district courts on 1 September 2025. The eCourtsIndia index shows 4,86,708 pending Delhi records that cite the Act by name. That is about 1.6 lakh fewer than the Supreme Court’s NJDG figure a year earlier. Part of the gap may be Delhi complaints whose records carry no act text, and part may be disposals since the Court’s directions. We have not measured either. Our Delhi district courts guide explains how to search these courts, and our analysis of Delhi district cause lists shows what a typical listing day looks like for these matters.

Which courts have the most Section 138 cases?

Court	Court code	Pending Section 138 records
Judicial Magistrate, Jaipur Metro HQ, Rajasthan	RJJM02	2,77,944
Metropolitan Magistrate Court Complex, Calcutta	WBCS02	2,70,493
Metropolitan Magistrate Court, Ahmedabad	GJAH22	2,60,115
Judicial Magistrate, Jaipur Metro II HQ, Rajasthan	RJJT02	2,12,766
Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, South West, Dwarka Court, Delhi	DLSW02	1,22,915
Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, New Delhi, Patiala House Courts	DLND02	1,02,612

Six court establishments carry 12,46,845 pending records between them. Jaipur alone, across its two metropolitan magistrate headquarters, holds 4,90,710. That concentration follows Section 142(2) of the Act, which lets a payee file where its own bank branch is, so lenders file in the cities where they collect. It is also why the Supreme Court aimed its dashboard directions at metropolitan courts first. Anyone can browse a court’s daily list on the free eCourtsIndia cause lists.

How old is the backlog?

Filing year	Pending records
2018 or earlier	5,63,831
2019	3,39,945
2020	2,31,924
2021	3,50,121
2022	5,24,811
2023	6,80,255
2024	8,79,516
2025	11,02,890
2026	6,59,898

The pending docket is mostly recent. 11,02,890 pending records were filed in 2025 and 8,79,516 in 2024. Records filed in 2018 or earlier make up 5,63,831, about 10.6% of the pending total. That shape says the system is not only failing to clear an old backlog. It is also struggling to keep pace with fresh filings, which have risen almost every year since the pandemic dip. For comparison with other kinds of cases, see our index of how long Indian court cases take.

Filing year	All records citing Section 138
2015	4,37,491
2016	6,18,960
2017	8,46,391
2018	9,95,700
2019	11,90,784
2020	6,84,247
2021	9,22,856
2022	11,36,825
2023	11,43,589
2024	12,18,755
2025	12,84,933

Which courts hear cheque bounce cases?

Section 138 complaints are tried by a Metropolitan Magistrate or a Judicial Magistrate of the first class (Section 142(1)(c)). In the big cities that includes the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate courts in the table above. Of the 1,34,61,226 records, 97,335 are in the High Courts (11,486 pending) and 3,245 in the Supreme Court. Everything else, more than 99 percent, is in district and magistrate courts. The earlier version of this post, written when the index held mostly High Court orders, called the visible data an “appellate tip”. That was a fair description of the index in April 2026. It is no longer true: the trial-court docket is now indexed record by record, and the High Court slice is under one percent of it.

Keyword searches still behave differently from structured ones. A phrase search for “cheque bounce” returns only 3,352 records, because that colloquial phrase appears mostly in High Court order text. The structured search on the Act and section number is the one to use for counting. Our eCourtsIndia Search Guide explains phrase quotes, AND and OR, and the filters used here.

Who files these cases

Lenders are among the largest filers. HDFC Bank is a party to 5,84,368 records that cite the Act and section, 2,09,079 of them pending, about 3.9% of all pending Section 138 records and the largest single-lender share. Its CC (criminal complaint) docket is larger, at 12,09,762 records. Many of these are likely Section 138 complaints whose records carry no act text, but some may be complaints under other laws, such as bounced electronic payment mandates. We have not separated the two. Our Bank Litigation Index breaks down eight lenders, and The Conglomerate Litigation Map shows the same pattern in the vehicle-finance and NBFC arms of large groups, such as the 71,123 CC records whose party names contain “Tata Motors”, a name match that also picks up Tata Motors Finance, the vehicle-lending company.

Being a party to a case, as complainant or respondent, says nothing about the merits of any case, and pending cases do not imply wrongdoing.

On the other side are individual borrowers, small traders and proprietorships. The amounts range from a few thousand rupees on a consumer loan EMI to crores on a working-capital facility. For larger corporate debts the equivalent tool is an insolvency petition, which we track in The NCLT Scorecard.

When the cheque comes from a company, Section 141 of the Act also reaches every person who, when the offence was committed, was in charge of, and responsible to, the company for the conduct of its business. Such a person is not liable to punishment if they prove the offence was committed without their knowledge, or that they exercised all due diligence to prevent it. Directors nominated because they hold an office or employment in the Central or State Government, or in a government-owned or controlled financial corporation, cannot be prosecuted under this Chapter. Separately, under Section 141(2), a director, manager, secretary or other officer is also liable if the offence was committed with their consent or connivance, or is attributable to their neglect. We look at how that reverse burden runs through Indian business law in why a murder accused has more rights than a company director.

What did the Supreme Court change in 2025?

On 25 September 2025, in Sanjabij Tari v. Kishore S. Borcar (Criminal Appeal 1755 of 2010, 2025 INSC 1158), a bench of the Hon’ble Supreme Court comprising Justices Manmohan and N.V. Anjaria restored a conviction under Section 138 and, noting the backlog in metropolitan district courts, issued guidelines that High Courts and district courts were to implement by 1 November 2025. The main directions:

• Summons must also be served dasti, by the complainant, and by electronic means under the applicable BNSS rules. The complainant must give the accused’s email, mobile and WhatsApp details on affidavit, and file an affidavit of service.
• Online payment: each Principal District and Sessions Judge must set up secure QR code or UPI payment links, and the summons must tell the accused that the cheque amount can be paid at the first stage.
• A standard synopsis, in a format set by the Court, must be filed at the top of every Section 138 complaint.
• No pre-cognizance summons under Section 223 BNSS is required in these cases. Our CrPC to BNSS section mapping lists the new procedure sections.
• Summary trial remains the default under Section 143. A court that converts to summons trial must record reasons, and interim deposit under Section 143A should be ordered early where appropriate.
• Physical courts should hear matters after summons are served, and High Courts should set realistic cheque-amount limits for evening courts.
• Dashboards: every District and Sessions Judge in Delhi, Mumbai and Calcutta must maintain a Section 138 dashboard showing total pendency, monthly disposals, the share settled or compounded, average adjournments per case and a stage-wise breakup, with monthly reviews and quarterly reports to the High Court.
• Committees: the Chief Justices of Delhi, Bombay and Calcutta were asked to set up administrative committees that meet monthly to monitor pendency and promote mediation and Lok Adalats.

The Court also revised the compounding costs first set in Damodar S. Prabhu (2010). Compounding means ending the case by settlement with the court’s permission, and the court has discretion at each stage:

When the cheque amount is paid	Cost to compound
Before the accused’s defence evidence is recorded	No cost
After defence evidence, before the trial court’s judgment	5% of the cheque amount
Before the Sessions Court or High Court in revision or appeal	7.5% of the cheque amount
Before the Supreme Court	10% of the cheque amount

The logic is simple: pay early and the case ends cheaply, pay late and it costs more. Combined with QR code payment in the summons itself, the directions try to turn the first hearing into the last one for accused persons who can pay.

What this means for lenders, complainants and accused persons

For lenders, the court dashboards the Supreme Court ordered are only useful if you can reconcile them with your own portfolio. A lender with lakhs of complaints needs to know, every week, which matters are listed, which have orders and which have gone quiet. Our Section 138 tracking guide shows how to build that on the eCourtsIndia API. Teams that would rather not build can use eCourtsIndia’s case tracking, which costs ₹5 per case per month and sends WhatsApp or email alerts when a matter is listed or an order is uploaded. Each delivered alert costs ₹0.50 per channel (as of September 2026; see pricing).

For complainants, including small businesses and individuals, the free litigant search finds cases in which your name appears as a party, the cause lists show the next date, and the eCourtsIndia Chrome extension flags tomorrow’s listings. You can also set up hearing alerts on a case. A lawyer from the verified advocate directory can take the matter on.

For anyone about to take a cheque, from a tenant, a buyer or a business partner, a quick check of the other side’s court record helps. A LegalCheck report lists court records that match a person’s or company’s name, including any Section 138 complaints. A match is not proof of identity, and a complaint is not a finding that anyone did wrong. Our guide to background checks against Indian court records explains how to read one, and our note on same-name matches in court record checks explains why a match needs checking.

For an accused, the 2025 directions make early payment the cheapest exit. If the cheque amount is paid before defence evidence is recorded, the trial court may allow compounding without any cost, and the QR code or UPI link in the summons is meant to make early payment possible. An advocate can advise on whether this suits the facts of a case.

Methodology and limitations

Every figure comes from the eCourtsIndia MCP server or API on 23 September 2026. The headline count is search_cases(query='"Negotiable Instruments" AND 138', facets="caseStatus,caseType,stateCode,filingYear"). The complaint-only count adds caseTypes="CC,COP,SC,ST", and the CC-only count uses caseTypes="CC". State, court and filing-year splits of the pending docket add caseStatuses="PENDING" with the stateCode, courtCode and filingYear facets. Court-level splits use courtLevels="HC" and "SC". Keep facets switched on, because a results-only call can report an approximate total for very large result sets. The official 43,05,932 figure is from the government’s reply to the Lok Sabha in December 2024, as reported by The Tribune on 16 November 2025.

• Data as of: records read through the API on 23 September 2026. Official comparison figures: government reply to the Lok Sabha, December 2024; NJDG figures cited by the Supreme Court for 1 September 2025.
• Definitions: a record is counted when its case data cites the Negotiable Instruments Act and Section 138. A pending record is one the court’s system showed as not yet decided when eCourtsIndia last refreshed it.
• Separate queries: the CC figure inside the complaint query (98,85,773) and the separate CC-only query (98,81,553) differ slightly, because counts from separate queries on very large result sets can differ.
• Limitations: complaints whose records carry no act text are missed. A record’s status is only as current as its last refresh from the court’s eCourts page. eCourtsIndia and the official system classify and de-duplicate records in their own ways, so record counts are not the same as unique cases. Party counts match names as a phrase, so spelling variants are missed and similar names can be included.
• Web search totals: the search box on ecourtsindia.com can show an approximate or much smaller total for very large result sets, so its counts will not match the API figures in this post. To reproduce the figures, run the API or MCP calls above. Read more on how we collect and refresh court data.

Explore the records

These links open the live search so you can browse the records. The web search shows an approximate total for very large result sets, so its totals will not match the API counts above. To reproduce the figures, run the API or MCP calls in the Methodology section.

• Section 138 records (methodology query): https://ecourtsindia.com/search?q=%22Negotiable+Instruments%22+AND+138
• NI Act 138 keyword search: https://ecourtsindia.com/search?q=NI+Act+138
• Rajasthan: https://ecourtsindia.com/search?q=NI+Act+138&sc=RJ
• Delhi: https://ecourtsindia.com/search?q=NI+Act+138&sc=DL
• “cheque bounce” keyword search: https://ecourtsindia.com/search?q=cheque+bounce
• HDFC Bank CC docket: https://ecourtsindia.com/litigant?lit=hdfc+bank&ct=CC
• Free cause lists: https://ecourtsindia.com/causelist

More than 53 lakh pending records cite Section 138, and about half were filed in 2023, 2024 or 2025. The Supreme Court has told the courts to keep score. Lenders, and the people who sign their cheques, should keep their own.

Being named in a court record does not mean a person or company did anything wrong.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

• Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881, Sections 138, 139, 141, 142, 143A and 148 (IndiaCode by eCourtsIndia). Checked 28 September 2026. IndiaCode by eCourtsIndia is a private structured republication; the Gazette and competent issuing authority remain authoritative.
• Supreme Court of India: Sanjabij Tari v. Kishore S. Borcar, Criminal Appeal 1755 of 2010, 2025 INSC 1158 (25 September 2025). Checked 28 September 2026. Supports the 2025 directions, compounding costs and the 1 September 2025 NJDG metro figures.
• Supreme Court of India: In Re: Expeditious Trial of Cases under Section 138 of NI Act, 1881 (16 April 2021). Checked 28 September 2026. Supports the 31 December 2019 figures.
• Supreme Court of India: Damodar S. Prabhu v. Sayed Babalal H. (3 May 2010). Checked 28 September 2026. Supports the October 2008 Law Commission figure.
• The Tribune: report on the 43,05,932 pending cheque bounce cases (Lok Sabha, December 2024) (16 November 2025). Checked 28 September 2026.
• eCourtsIndia: Pricing (case tracking, per-channel alerts). Checked 28 September 2026.