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M/S Bandekar Brothers Pvt. Ltd. & Anr. v. Prasad Vassudev Keni, etc. etc.

Criminal Appeal · 2020 INSC 531Decided 2 Sept 2020
Criminal Appeal Nos. 546-550 of 2017
Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman · Justice Navin Sinha

Background

Bandekar Brothers had filed criminal complaints in 2009 alleging the respondents gave false evidence and forged documents (debit notes, account entries) in the course of earlier civil suits between the parties over a business dispute dating to 1990. The complaints were converted into "private complaints" by a Magistrate, who issued process against the respondents for forgery and false-evidence offences. On revision, the Additional Sessions Judge quashed these private complaints, holding that Section 195(1)(b)(i) of the CrPC barred a private complaint for such offences, only a complaint filed by the concerned court itself, following the formal procedure under Section 340 CrPC, would be valid. The Bombay High Court (Goa Bench) upheld this quashing, and Bandekar Brothers appealed to the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court agreed that the Magistrate's 2011 order converting the complaints into private complaints was indeed improper, since Section 195 CrPC's bar did apply and such offences generally require the Section 340 procedure rather than a private complaint. However, the Court held that the lower courts had gone too far by effectively "throwing out the baby with the bathwater", while the conversion to a private complaint was wrong, the Court found that once that conversion order was set aside, the matter should have simply reverted the complaints to their original form (as filed in 2009) rather than quashing them outright. The Supreme Court therefore reinstated the two original 2009 complaints so they could proceed afresh following the proper Section 195/340 CrPC procedure, and disposed of the appeals accordingly.

Lesson Learnt

A procedural error (like a court wrongly converting or treating a complaint in an irregular form) doesn't automatically mean the underlying allegations are dead: courts should correct the specific procedural flaw and let a validly-filed case continue, rather than killing the case entirely because of a correctable technical mistake.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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