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Vinay Aggarwal v. State of Haryana

Criminal Appeal · 2025 INSC 433Decided 2 Apr 2025
Crl.A. No.-001744-001744 of 2025 (arising from SLP(Crl) No. 8403 of 2024), with Contempt Petition (Civil) No. 772/2024
Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia · Justice K. Vinod Chandran

Background

The appellant was accused in an FIR of impersonating an Intelligence Bureau officer and extorting money from a businessman by pressuring him into forced dealings with associates. The complainant went to the Punjab and Haryana High Court seeking to have the investigation transferred from the local Haryana police to the CBI, and a Single Judge allowed this. The appellant challenged that transfer before the Supreme Court, also pointing out that a near-identical, earlier FIR against him in Himachal Pradesh on similar allegations had already been quashed by the Himachal Pradesh High Court as an abuse of process. During the pendency of the case, the CBI registered an FIR despite a Supreme Court stay, leading to a separate contempt petition.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that transferring an investigation to the CBI is an extraordinary step to be used only in exceptional cases, not merely because a complainant makes vague allegations that local police are compromised or under-qualified. Here, the complainant's claims of police connivance were unsubstantiated, a Special Investigation Team of the local police was already in place, and the complainant had waited months after the FIR before seeking a CBI transfer, undermining the claimed urgency. The Court set aside the High Court's order transferring the case to CBI and restored it to local police, while separately accepting the unconditional apology of a CBI officer for filing an FIR in violation of the Court's stay order and closing the related contempt case.

Lesson Learnt

Courts will not hand investigations to the CBI on vague suspicion or convenience: a complainant must show something genuinely exceptional, since routine CBI transfers undermine both due process and the CBI's limited resources for serious cases.

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

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