Punit Beriwala v. The State of NCT of Delhi
Background
The appellant paid over Rs. 1.6 crore towards purchase of a Delhi property under a 2004 agreement to sell, signed by one family member as "Karta" of a Hindu Undivided Family (HUF) and witnessed by two relatives. Years later, a 2021 sale deed to a different buyer revealed that one of the witnesses, not the man who signed as Karta, had actually held that position since 2000, and that the property had also been separately mortgaged and sold to others. The appellant's FIR against all three family members was quashed by the Delhi High Court as against the two witnesses, on the ground that mere witnessing of a document could not amount to a crime.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court held that the High Court erred in treating the witnesses' role as merely ministerial: the complaint alleged they knowingly allowed a person who was not the real Karta to misrepresent his authority, which is a substantive part of the alleged conspiracy to deceive. The Court reaffirmed that mere delay in filing an FIR, or the pendency of a parallel civil suit, cannot by itself justify quashing a complaint, especially where limitation only began running once the deception was discovered. Because there were also contradictory cross-FIRs between the parties over the same transaction, the Court held these needed to be investigated together rather than quashed at a preliminary stage, and revived the FIR against the two respondents.
Lesson Learnt
Signing a document merely as a "witness" does not automatically shield a person from criminal liability if they knew of and facilitated an underlying fraud, and delay in filing a complaint is measured from when the fraud was actually discovered, not from the date of the original transaction.