Mumbai A sessions court here issued a non-bailable warrant against filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma on his failure to remain present in the court when it was hearing an appeal filed by him, challenging the lower court order which had awarded him three months simple imprisonment in a cheque bounce case, a lawyer said on Friday.The session court while issuing non-bailable warrant also rejected his plea seeking suspension of the lower court order pronounced by the Judicial Magistrate (First Class) in Andheri, YP Pujari, on January 21, in the cheque bounce case.
He was sentenced to three months jail and was also directed to pay Rs 3,72,219 to the complainant within three months.Last month, Varma had moved the sessions court, Dindoshi challenging the order of the sentencing claiming that the cheque doesn’t bear his signature nor was it issued by him. With the appeal, Varma pleaded for suspension of the sentence and also asked for bail.
However, both his pleas were rejected by the Additional Sessions Judge AA Kulkarni as the filmmaker was not present before the court. Varma has been given the liberty to move the plea again after appearing before the court.The case has now been adjourned to July 28 for execution of the warrant. The complaint related to cheque bounce filed by a partnership firm Shree through one of its partners, Mahesh Chandra Mishra, in 2018 through his lawyers Rajesh Kumar Patel and Alok Singh. The firm had provided a hard disk to Varma’s firm in February-March 2018, for which the cheques issued have been bounced.(UNI)
