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Siddharth Mukesh Bhandari vs The State of Gujarat

Criminal Appeal · 2022 INSC 788Decided 2 Aug 2022
Criminal Appeal No. 1044 of 2022
M.R. Shah · B.V. Nagarathna

Background

The appellant, an original complainant in criminal cases arising from two FIRs, had earlier succeeded before the Supreme Court in getting an interim order of the Gujarat High Court set aside: an order that had stayed investigation into his complaints against the accused persons while they sought quashing of the proceedings under Section 482 of the CrPC. Despite this, when the High Court again took up the accused's petitions for admission, the same Single Judge once more granted an interim stay on further investigation, effectively repeating the earlier error. The complainant again approached the Supreme Court against this fresh interim order.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court found that the High Court had failed to properly understand and apply the Court's own earlier ruling in M/s. Neeharika Infrastructure Pvt. Ltd. vs. State of Maharashtra, which holds that a stay of investigation under Section 482 CrPC should be granted only in the "rarest of rare" cases, since investigating agencies have a right to investigate. The accused's counsel, faced with this, did not press for a detailed reasoned order and instead sought only that the underlying quashing petitions be decided on their own merits. Accordingly, the Court set aside the High Court's interim stay order, directed the investigating officer to complete investigation within three months, and left it open to the High Court to decide the quashing petitions on merits, and to the accused to seek anticipatory bail if needed.

Lesson Learnt

High Courts cannot routinely stay a criminal investigation merely because they have admitted a petition seeking to quash the proceedings: investigation is treated as a valuable and largely unstoppable process, and repeated disregard of a binding precedent by a lower court will be corrected on appeal.

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

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