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Usha Chakraborty & Anr. vs State of West Bengal & Anr.

Criminal Appeal · 2023 INSC 86Decided 30 Jan 2023
Criminal Appeal No. 256 of 2023
Ajay Rastogi · C.T. Ravikumar · M.R. Shah as the presiding judge

Background

The appellants (the chairperson of the Bagla Sundari Memorial Trust and the headmistress of the school it runs (Rose Bank Educare, Madhyamgram, North 24 Parganas)) were accused by Jayanta Banerjee, a former trustee and school secretary, of having illegally re-registered the trust deed in 2016 to remove him, of assaulting and threatening him, and of withholding his LIC policy, bank passbooks, car, provident fund and ESI documents. In April 2017 a Barasat magistrate forwarded his application under Section 156(3) CrPC to the police, and an FIR was registered for assault, extortion, criminal breach of trust, forgery, cheating and conspiracy. What Banerjee did not disclose, and swore on affidavit that he had "not placed this incident before any court", was that he had already filed a civil title suit in 2015 over his removal as secretary, in which he had failed to get interim relief and the civil court had prima facie found him validly removed. The Calcutta High Court refused to quash the FIR.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court allowed the appeal and quashed the FIR and all proceedings against the appellants. It set out the ingredients of each alleged offence and found the application vague and lacking them: there was no allegation that these appellants caused hurt, put anyone in fear of injury to extract property, or committed any specific act of forgery, cheating or breach of trust. The real cause was the complainant's removal from the trust and secretaryship, an essentially civil dispute already pending before a competent civil court, and his concealment of that suit showed the criminal complaint was a weapon of harassment after civil remedies had not gone his way. Relying on Paramjeet Batra, Vesa Holdings, Bhajan Lal and Neeharika Infrastructure, the Court held that letting the prosecution continue would be an abuse of process and a miscarriage of justice.

Lesson Learnt

A dispute over control of a trust, society or school is civil in nature; you cannot pursue it in a civil court and simultaneously file a criminal complaint on the same facts while hiding the suit from the magistrate. Courts will quash such FIRs, and concealing a pending civil case in a sworn application seriously undermines the complainant's credibility.

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

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